Stamina, Not Speed: Why Change Sticks

Justin Lake: Welcome to the Frontline Innovators podcast. I'm your host Justin Lake and our guest today focuses on building leaders who build an engaged workforce and stronger performance across sales organizations in his role as vice president of sales at Southern Glaciers Wine and Spirits. He has over two decades of experience rising from consultant to senior leadership across multiple markets, bringing a practical frontline informed perspective on developing people first cultures. that deliver results. Steve has authored two books, his first book titled Leaders Created, and most recently published Business Changes Fast, People Change Slow. Please welcome to the show Steve Reiner. Hello, Steve.

Steve Reiner: Hello Justin.

Justin Lake: So excited to have you on today. As I mentioned before we started recording, I just finished your book this morning. So thank you for sending me a copy in advance. I did feel a lot of pressure to finish before today's recording. So I'm glad I did get that done. It was easy to get through in that it was engaging. Your book is all about what I spend most of my working life thinking about and the people aspects of change.

Steve Reiner: Thank you. Me too. All right.

Justin Lake: For those that have ever listened to the show before, I usually start with a question that is, what is the biggest operational consequence of not getting adoption on the front lines? I'm gonna not ask that question today because I want to actually pull up a topic directly from Steve's book. And I'm gonna flip everything upside down because deep in, I think it was the last chapter, Steve, there's a section that specifically talks about the question I normally lead the show off with. So you kind of close out the book by tying the process of leading change to culture and then to the P &L. And that's such an important element that I think we often lose sight of. For a CFO or a CEO or other senior leaders in the organization who are skeptical that

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: change capability shows up in the numbers. How do you make that connection more real? Like, especially in frontline heavy businesses where adoption rates directly drive revenue and cost, how do you connect the dots and

Steve Reiner: Yeah, thanks. Justin, first, I really appreciate being here with you and being able to talk through the book and engage with your audience. I follow you on LinkedIn and I love so many of the videos and other things that you post and from your other podcast guests. So it's really, really informational for me and love engaging with, you know, like minded people that we're all just trying to do the same thing. And if you're in a for-profit business, I think, you know, we're all here to, to deliver a profit. And if you think about it, it's people that deliver performance. and people that deliver profit. So if you want to improve either of those two, you know, that's why we have that people first. And I know we talk a lot about and we hear about people first, but I really have made a career of focusing on the frontline and understanding what they go through and how critical they are to any business operation. if, know, for the sake of leading change and And when I talk about business changes fast and people change slow, we can all see how fast business is changing. mean, just when you roll out one thing, there's already an update the next day. And it's just moving so fast. But people don't move that fast. People don't adopt that fast. We are creatures of habit. We create habits in our day-to-day work and our life. mean, like they say, we all put our pants on the same way. We all get ready in the morning. We're routine creatures. And same thing at work. We create these habits. that help us get through our day to be efficient, conserve energy, however you want to look at it. And so when we're asking them to adopt to something new, a new platform, a new process, a new form, beyond even a new technology, a new manager comes on, I mean, there's so much change coming at them every day. And for me, I found it's so many of the little things I call it, it's those pebbles every day that sting worse to the frontline than the big platform change, right? Like the big platform change is very disruptive. You know, we spend many months preparing for that. But even if you think about the day to day, the little things every day that slow our people down because they have to think about what they're doing, right? We create days so we don't have to think, we just go through. And when human beings have to slow down and think, it disrupts the flow. And so when it comes to leading change and the P &L, we typically are changing something because there's some benefit. It's either gonna help us. make more money, it's going to help us save money, something in the P &L, if it's not going to affect either making the money or saving the money, then why are we doing it? And there's also other reasons for that. But it's really about creating these efficiencies. And the faster we can take advantage of this new technology, this new process, that we can create this efficiency, help our people move faster, our slow creatures. So whatever we're doing to help them move faster, the sooner we can reap that benefit. the bigger impact it has on that P &L. And the longer they're in that disruptive cycle, the longer they're in that where they're slowing down because they have to change, they have to find this new way of working, it's costing us every minute they're in that change curve. it's really a couple-sided piece of having them adopt to that technology that's really gonna, or whatever process to really increase those efficiencies.

Justin Lake: Yes.

Steve Reiner: and really getting them out of that change curve faster so they can get to a new comfort zone and they can start delivering on whatever efficiency was just created.

Justin Lake: Yeah, I had another guest on recently who also wrote a book. It seems like this is becoming a trend. Julie Whitten who said the can of worms is gonna get opened. It's either gonna get opened before the change or after the change, right? And so it reminds me of what you just said. And I think you said something that is so important that I think gets overlooked. The reason for the change is tied to either revenue,

Steve Reiner: Yeah, it is. But yeah, I love listening to that clip. Yeah.

Justin Lake: Increase opportunity, cost savings, opportunity. There's some reason that we're implementing this change. We're not doing this just to create disruption. There's an outcome that we're trying to achieve. And so the faster that we can endure this change, get through this process and to achieve the new version of steady state on the other side of that change, the faster we can realize those benefits. I think the challenge and you address this in your book and I can't wait to get into this is that

Steve Reiner: Mm-hmm. Sure.

Justin Lake: Leaders sometimes put in motion those challenges with the outcomes in mind and don't think a lot between the time they made the decision to when that outcome happens. And there's a theme throughout your entire book that I absolutely love, which is the leaders need to be more involved in the execution of the change. We can't let senior leaders in the organization or they shouldn't let themselves just be the deciders.

Steve Reiner: Right, right.

Justin Lake: and not be participants. And you literally paint this picture that is like burned in my brain of the decision makers kind of coming into some of these meetings and maybe kicking off the meeting in the front of the room and then going into the back of the room or maybe even slipping out the back door, right? And that, had that, you know, I had a real visceral reaction to that because I can see that. I've seen that happen before.

Steve Reiner: Sure. Right. Sure. yeah. yeah. sure.

Justin Lake: And you make the case throughout this whole book, and I'm going to get into some of the questions on this, but you make the case throughout the whole book that part of the problem when change doesn't go well, it's probably because some of those things happen. let's get into this. So OK, I'm going to go back now to the beginning of the framework. So I kind of jumped right to the end to the punch line talking about the P &L and how to make this case. But I want to come back to the early part. You make the case about shrinking the gap. Business changes fast, people changing slow. you frame change in leadership as this concept of shrinking the gap between how fast business is changing, and yet how slow people tend to change. So for frontline teams who are already stretched in, they're far from the corporate office, right? Where many of those decisions have been made, where does that gap widen first? Like, what's the very first move leaders should make to start closing that gap where they can see that?

Steve Reiner: Yeah, definitely. I love that. for me, know, the kind of the greatest thing throughout the book and, you know, it's even in the subtitle, it's really about creating that competitive advantage. Being able to lead change faster than other companies is our creative, you know, is our competitive advantage today because of how fast business is changing. Now, we're never going to eliminate the gap between the rate business is changing and people change. mean, business is it's just too fast. Right. So the the framework, right, and I call it the Change Stamina Framework, is really designed to shrink that gap as much as we can, never gonna eliminate it, but how do we shrink that gap, get people into the change, get them back to a new comfort zone, not to their old comfort zone, because change is gonna force them into a new comfort zone so that they can get back like we talked about, you know, and start reaping the benefits of that. So it's a real competitive advantage today. to be able to lead change faster than someone else. And I really put it on the leader. And when you look at the framework, it's a four step framework. The first step is that the leaders learn first. The leaders, especially on a big, right? You're doing a big platform change. I'm talking about 90 days in advance, three months, 12 weeks. Leaders are starting to get in a room together. No frontline. No managers, I'm talking your top leaders are getting into a room to start understanding the change as well as they are going to expect the frontline to understand it. See, I think we put so much of the onus on the frontline, middle management and below. And I see it in all, mean, this is in so many industries and companies and this isn't just one and you've seen it, know, you know, the companies that you work with. And so it really puts the onus on the leader to understand the change. as well even better than the frontline because you can't clear roadblocks, you can't answer questions, you can't build confidence by just passing along the responsibility of who's leading that change. You know, when you can stand in front of the room, which is step three, which is leaders host the training. And like you mentioned, I'm not talking about kicking it off and leaving the room, kicking it off, turning over to training. And I'm talking about the leader. Learning the change so well that they could stand in front of the organization and teach the class. Like when that happens, there is a whole new outcome to the change that you're leading. When a leader understands it, when they're able to teach it, it really, and I've seen it across multiple markets and places and different initiatives, that it absolutely accelerates. and why I was excited to write this down and to be able to share it with everybody.

Justin Lake: Have you had any leaders come back after participating more than they had in the past? I'd be curious to see if you've gotten any feedback or maybe there was kind of an epiphany or an aha moment where somebody said, you know, maybe in the past, I would have done what you just said. I would have walked out and kind of, you know, I delegated the rest of the team and let them do their thing. this time I stayed more involved. Any stories that come to mind that are worth sharing?

Steve Reiner: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when this kind of started, you know, I was working in a market, were we were launching a new technology and, you know, it was the first time we got everybody together. And, you know, you could see, you know, I love standing back when leaders are in a room together talking through, you know, and it's not just the actual technical change or whatever, you're actually talking through, you know, how people react to change, what kind of objections are we going to get? Right. It's not just the technical piece of it. It's also talking about why do people resist change? Why do people move slow? What are we going to anticipate? So we can start working through those things as leaders. And then once we bring managers in, we do it again, right? That's month two. And then we start bringing in some frontline champions. That's month three. And the leader is in the room the whole time. I call it the change stamina framework because the stamina is to stick with it. You know, sometimes you... come into something once, twice. You're like, all right, I did that. I'm busy now, right? This is calling for the leader to have the stamina to stick with it. And then step four of reinforcing for a very long time is that takes stamina. It's not just once you have that launch meeting, you've just finished the easiest part, right? Now the real hard part is that long-term. So when we were launching this technology and I got to stand back and watch the leaders kind of interacting with each other and learning You know, it was amazing after we did all that. And I have so many stories of this. This was just the first time. And, know, it's kind of like that first time you get hooked to something, you know, this was the first time that like I heard it, I saw it and the results that it delivered were at the time it was the fastest launch that the organization had. And it was solely because the leaders learned first, the leaders put their hands on it. They knew how to answer questions. They knew how to. push back on just the what ifs and the, you know, like they really kept the teams focused and they got out in the field, they saw it firsthand and they talked to customers. Like they really understood it. So by the time it launched, they were able to say, understand it. And they weren't just able to say it. They were able to show it because they could answer questions. They could push back. They could help guide. They could clear roadblocks. And to see that kind of performance at that time is really what hooked me in. And then of course there were many times. after that. And so every time I work with different leaders and they start seeing it, you know, but then it's about keeping them in, right? That's why stamina, was really, it was really important for me when thinking of a name of this framework, you didn't want to just be the Rinder Change framework. Like I wanted it to like really say what it is. And it's that stamina that I write a lot about for leaders to stick with it because we want to get busy doing something else or get pulled in this direction. But if leading change is important to you, you understand the P &L implications, you understand the competitive advantage that's out there for you. For me, this is the number one job and priority of a leader. And hence why we really frame it up and put it on leadership and take some of the pressure off the front line, because they're already going to feel enough pressure.

Justin Lake: They are. yeah, I think that such an interesting thing about the way that you describe leadership being involved. It ties in with something that we've talked about a lot on the podcast about confidence building. But what's interesting about your take is that it's different from what we are normally talking about here. And I think you're coming at this from a different angle. And I appreciate and agree with you that We are often talking about confidence building on the front lines. And what's missed in that is the confidence that's required by leaders. I think, you tell me if you see this differently, but I think the reason that sometimes some of those leaders walk out the back of the room as you described in the book and reinforced here, is because they actually don't have the confidence to stand in front of the room and talk about this change. They actually don't know the details. They know what the business outcomes were.

Steve Reiner: Yeah, Right. Right. Right.

Justin Lake: that caused them to potentially be involved in this decision, or maybe they were the one that made the decision to move forward on this change or this technology platform or whatever the case may be. But they don't have the confidence to stand in front of their own team and talk about the how. They may be able to talk a little bit about the why, but they're not gonna actually be able to talk about what's involved in this, right? Because they haven't built the confidence themselves to be able to do that in front of the group. And so the easy thing,

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: is to turn that over to others and to slip out the back door and say, I've got a meeting to get to. Sorry, I can't stay here for this. But your approach really front end loads that responsibility on the leaders. And even though we don't think about the leaders as needing the confidence boost, like it's so easy to think about that for the front lines. Like, they're young in their career, they're developing, we need to give them a boost of confidence. It's easy to think of that. I think we miss.

Steve Reiner: Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: that senior leaders in the organization when it comes to this complexity, they need that change too. Because guess what? Leaders have the same muscle memory of doing things the old way also. And so they have the excuse of being busy and being delegators that they can get off the hot seat. And you kind of challenge them to say, if you actually want this to be effective, if you actually want to get the business outcomes that you intended to when you implemented this change, this is your role in this.

Steve Reiner: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I challenge any leader to grab a copy of the book. I wrote it to be a 100-some pages, big font. I actually did it purposefully a couple clicks bigger for make it an indie read. I challenge any leader, just try it once and call me. I'll help you through it. Just try it once because not only will it help you, but more importantly, it's going to help the front line. The front line is under so much pressure. not only are dealing with their day to day and everything else they have going on, there's change coming at them every single day. And it, you know, we talk about people and we talk about people first and we talk about things, but like, we just keep sending more pressure down there and we have to, and it's going to continue, but there's gotta be a way that we're able to help them through a lot of this stuff. I challenge just, just try once. Like I said, I told you that story the first time they started coming together. You know, and you get hooked when you stand around and you're watching everybody collaborating and communicating and you see the confidence. I love how you framed up about the confidence in leaders. You see the confidence start building. You know, now after one session, two sessions, three sessions, you think about it. 12 weeks ahead of a major launch, leaders are getting together once, twice, three, four times as leaders, right? Then they bring in the managers and then they're fifth, sixth, seventh time. Like you got to think you're getting in a room talking about this stuff five, six, seven times. You're going to start feeling really confident about then you're and the leader still stays there a month three with the frontline and the managers now hear it for week five, six, seven, eight. Like you got to see you see it. It's obvious that the confidence this is going to build and you can see how it's going to speed up. it's like you said, like this is just my take on it. This isn't anything new. Right. There's nothing really creative here. It just kind of flipped it a little bit. like you were talking about. And that's why it's called leading change. Like we talk about leading change all the time, but leading subverb, it's an action. Like leading changes and just getting up in the room, kicking it off, having a cup of coffee and leaving. That's not leading change. Soap boxing about how important change is. We know that. I hear it everything I listen to and I read a lot and it's always about how important change is. And that's where at some point it dawned on me. It's like, okay, I get that leading change is important, but how do you change? Like, How do I change as an employee? How do I lead change as an employee? And so that's what sent me down this journey to start saying, okay, I get that it's important. Everybody gets that it's important. How do we do it? And why do people change slow? And how do we start shrinking that gap? And that's kind of where this came about over the past dozen years or so. And then did it so much that I don't have to prove it to myself anymore. I've done this framework so much that I have seen it over and over again and then I see other leaders and now they started, hey this is how we lead change, right? Like when your organization can talk about how we lead change, you know you're onto something. So I challenge anybody, grab the book, call me and I'll be happy to work on it.

Justin Lake: Well, you call it out as the leader's excuse and it actually is a good segue into my next question. And I actually know this because we've looked at research that indicates frontline teams don't fear change as much as some leaders believe that they do. What they fear is change without the support that they need to be able to be successful, right?

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: And you write that when leaders say people don't like change, it becomes kind of their excuse, right? It's like they're just saying, people don't like change. So, you know, they're the obstacle that we have to overcome. And you frame it as an excuse for leaders. And so I'm just curious, like, think my question is, how would you coach those leaders? I think you've already described some of the steps that you would implement, but are there other things that you would maybe help a leader understand of their role?

Steve Reiner: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: in this change that it's actually not the recipients of this change that we're requesting that's the problem.

Steve Reiner: Right? Yeah, you know, I think and that's what I heard. I get heard how important changes for years. I've read about it. I watch videos. I see all sorts of things. And then I hear about how people don't like change. And then I started thinking and seeing like if we think about in our lives, we change all the time. There's something new. There's something this, you know, even when our mortgage gets purchased and now we have to make a payment to a different provider. Like we change all the time. We get a new phone. We get a new this like we but we change when we want to. Right. See like We're going to change when we're good and ready. So the challenge for me was, well, how do we help people be good and ready, right, on our timeline? And that's which, if we're going to have a launch three months from now, how do we spend the next three months getting everybody ready, getting leaders ready, getting managers ready, getting the frontline ready, right? So that when there is, you know, the change, that launch does come, they're ready. You know, I found it's people, it's not that they don't like change, they don't like a surprise. And most changes, an email on a Friday that we're going live Monday, right? Like, and please, somebody challenged me on that. No, no, that's not how it goes, right? And it's an email and then they wonder why adoption is slow. And so I heard for years, you know, that, that people don't like change. And so that's why I framed it up as the leader's excuse because they say, well, people don't like change. So that's why change is slow. And that's why adoption is slow because it's the frontline. And when I found this way and when I took the responsibility to learn and other leaders took the responsibility to learn and we found that adoption wasn't as slow as it once was, that's when I realized wait maybe it's not the front line, maybe it is the leader. So that's where I took the responsibility to learn it as well if not better than the people I'm asking to change so that I can get ahead of it, you know, communicate it. I mean really the four parts of the framework are leaders learn first, leaders communicate, leaders host the training, and then leaders reinforce for a very long time. And so between the, you know, if you think there's three steps of just getting up to the training and that's easy, that reinforce for a very long time. And I purposely made that a long sentence in the chapter. because it is a long time that leaders need to reinforce because of the change curve and the bell curve of how many people go through. You have your 20 % early adopters, your 20 % of people who are gonna stick their feet in the sand, and everybody else in the middle. And it's how do you get that everybody else in the middle? How do you get that 60 %? So that 60 % plus your 20 % early, now you got 80 % of the people through, right? And then I also talk about how to, you know what to do with the resisters. But that's where it's really on the leader to understand how people change, how many people go through change at what speed, and then what can they do to clear roadblocks and help people through. And that's why I wanted to call out the leaders excuse, but not only just tell them that, but give them something tangible that they can actually do, you know, to take away that excuse.

Justin Lake: Sure. Well, and I think the confidence and the competence that the leaders build by being involved early and often in the process, that will be seen by the people who are ultimately going to have to adopt this. And so if they see that the leaders are embracing, then they are more likely to embrace. I can actually, maybe it's more relatable to say it the other way.

Steve Reiner: Mm. Mm. Sure. Yeah.

Justin Lake: when you don't see leaders adopting the same change that they're asking you to change, then it actually can become an excuse the other way, where the followers in the organization, the people that are doing the work can say, if the leaders aren't even doing this thing, they're not changing their behaviors, why do I have to change mine? And I know there's gonna be some skepticism. You talk about this, I have a couple questions from now, I wanna talk about the resisters piece, but like, that's a...

Steve Reiner: Yeah, right. Right. Definitely.

Justin Lake: a move from the resisters is to say like, well, this change probably isn't really going to stick anyway. So I'm going to be reluctant. I'm going to hold back. But when you see the leaders adopting this themselves and being part of the communication, then it kind of takes that out of play. And I think that that goes to one of the things that I think is probably my favorite quote in the book. is get out from behind the desk. This is something I've been preaching for a long time.

Steve Reiner: Right, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: I think leaders need to spend more time, especially in field based roles where, know, yes, they should get out from a desk, even if the people they serve are just in an office. But this is especially true when people work out in the field, you guys have sales and delivery operations that are not happening on your property, they're happening on your customer's property, right? And I think it's so important for leaders to get out in field and actually see this. Can you share a story of a leader who actually did this with a frontline team and

Steve Reiner: Right. Yeah.

Justin Lake: maybe something that came of that experience, or maybe it was you that observed some things. But I know I'm preaching to the choir with this need to get out into the field, so I'm curious if you have a story.

Steve Reiner: Sure, sure, sure, no. No thanks, I love talking about, know, most of what I talk about, most of what I know, I didn't come up with myself like we talked about here, leading change is not a topic, like management, most of the stuff has been written about at this point, I think all the different books I've read and the one that I wrote is just my take, right? It's just someone else's take. It's just, so, you know, the whole get out from behind the desk was I worked for somebody one time. said to me and this is typically a lot of the things that I have learned over the years. It's just somebody I was crossing paths with said something that stuck with me and they said the most dangerous place to manage from is behind the desk and that always stuck with me and you know I always thought about right it's very easy for me and for many of us to just be in our email all day and sit here and it's nice it's air-conditioned I got a refrigerator I'm you know happy. You know, it's very comfortable being here. get used to being here. We say things like, earned my stripes. I was in the field. Right now I've graduated to being in the office. And yeah, look, a lot of my job is in the office and a lot of what I do in meetings and things happen here. And I do need to be here. You know, but I challenge myself to keep a day a week, at least right now, to be in the field with the frontline. And it's amazing. I spend more time answering. why questions when I'm out there. And I love why questions. think some managers take it as challenging, but I love it. Why questions? Because people want to understand, they want to be connected to the vision. They want to know this grinding I'm doing every day and the rain and the sleet and the heat and the whatever, you know, is for something. I also found like people want to work. Like, now look, if we could all win the lottery and go do something else, of course, but.

Justin Lake: course.

Steve Reiner: You know, we have to we have to work. you know, people want to make the best of it. We all have a purpose, right? They want to feel what they're doing is is adding to the bigger picture and bringing purpose. And I spend most of the time out there. Why is it like this? Why is pricing like this? Why is operations like this? Why is right? Because they just want to understand and when I explain it to them, I'm telling 10 out of 10 times it's, I didn't realize that. I didn't know that's how it went. I didn't know that that was the reason. And it's so hard for as much as I think I communicate and for much as I wrote a book on all this stuff too, you know, it still doesn't solve it, right? Leading change, none of this framework just makes change painless. Like all the obstacles you have with leading change is still there. Like we talked about the resisters, the this, the that. What it is, it speeds it up. It shrinks the gap. That's the goal, right? So all the same problems are still there. No matter how much I communicate. there's still people who are like, I didn't know that. And my goal is to communicate until people say, Steve, please stop it, we get it. And I have yet to have that happen. Not only that has not happened, every single time there's a look on the face, there's a question, there's a something that is like they heard it for the first time, because we're absorbing so much. So most of my time is spent out there just to connect with people, to see what's going on, to hear from our customers, to hear from our consultants, so that I can. Clear roadblocks. spend all day out there not only answering white questions, but I'm on the phone. Hey, why are we doing this? What are we doing here? Can we fix this? You know, I'm like clearing roadblocks and that would never happen if I was sitting for today. I'm in the office today. I will not pass two days. I was I was in the field on the phone all day, clear answering questions, doing things here. I won't. I'm not clearing any roadblocks why I'm here today. You know, I'm just more meeting and doing other things. So that's where kind of the whole scariest place to manage from. And then once I started getting out there and started seeing and you know, cause it really, and now, now I'm hooked on it. I love it. Now I say to my boss all the time, I need to be in the field five days a week, you know, and he supports it, you know, but obviously there's like other things that, that we need to do. So it's a balance and I prioritize it. I block that day out months in advance so that I don't book anything that like, that's it. I manage my calendar.

Justin Lake: Yeah. so you can protect it on your calendar. Yeah.

Steve Reiner: and book it out. So that space is locked up and everybody knows it.

Justin Lake: You talked about something in the beginning of the book when you kind of framed why this is so difficult. I think it's a good time to kind of bring us back to that for a moment, which is I don't think that you use the expression muscle memory, but that's kind of what you were describing where it's like status quo. We have a routine. You described it as a routine, right? Every day we kind of do this thing and it is actually it consumes less mental and physical energy. for us to keep doing things the same way. No matter how you want to describe that, that routine in our personal lives and in our work lives, like as humans, we kind of gravitate toward consuming as little energy as we need to to get through to accomplish things. And the best way to do that is to keep doing the same thing. And so then by definition now, we're challenging that routine, right? Because we're implementing some change, a system, a process, whatever the case may be.

Steve Reiner: Right. Right. Right.

Justin Lake: And so it's challenging that routine. And that is difficult. It does require more energy, mental, physical energy to actually change our processes. It feels awkward. I've told the story recently a couple of times, my wife and I just for the first time we've been living in this house for 25 years. We just moved our garbage can in our kitchen. And it sounds so simple, man. I wanted to make the move. I'm the one who actually purchased the new garbage can and designated where the thing was gonna go. So I wasn't even resisting change, but my God, for 10 days, I went back to the old spot to throw stuff out every time to open up that cabinet door. There's not a garbage can there. And so it just, it kind of hit me in the face. Like this is a change I wanted to make. I actually was the decision maker. Well, all right, my wife was the decision maker, but.

Steve Reiner: Hang on. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: She supported, you we came to this conclusion, right? And yet still, it was a hard change for us to make. And so when you think about these other things, I think it is why the why matters so much, because we have to accept that this is going to require some extra energy burn in order to get there. And the way that people can do that or feel better about that is understanding what that's connected to, right?

Steve Reiner: We know. Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: And so I think that it just makes so much sense to me. And when you described it the way that you did in terms of the routine being easier, it just, made so much sense. It also comes into something that you've talked about a couple of times now, which is the adoption curve. And I love the way that you frame this out. And there's something in here that I don't want to say I disagreed with, but my brain is naturally goes to a different place. And so with this adoption curve, you talked about there kind of being a bell curve. you've got you know, something like 10 to 20 % of the people that are going to be easy that will accept change just because because right, you got that 20 % on the back end that are the resisters and then you got roughly this the 60 % and I don't think you were arguing that this is an exact science but roughly it's a bell curve where you've got the early adopters kind of the majority sit in the middle and then you've got these resisters at the end. I think I might be a little guilty at times of being like

Steve Reiner: Yep. Right. sure yeah was rough. yeah yeah yeah.

Justin Lake: the problem solver that wants to go attack the 20 % resisters on the back end. Because like that's I am just naturally attracted to a problem that I can go try to solve. You made the case in this book that we should just let them be for the time being. And that we should focus on the 20 and the 60 % because you've kind of alluded to this already today. Like, once we get that done, we've got 80 % of the population. And now this back 20.

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

Justin Lake: They're either gonna come online or they're not. But now we've got 80%. So talk that through a little bit. Is this a place where maybe there are others like me who might get a little attracted to the problem area? Are we over-investing there and under-investing in that front 20 and 60?

Steve Reiner: They have a decision to make. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. I'm glad you disagree. because for me, it's no, no, got it. Yeah, no, no, no. mean, that it made you think, you know, like that you didn't mean to say that it made you think, right? And no, because I'm just like you, I am a problem solver at heart. And I want to focus on that 20%. And no, that's why I spent years going and I watch others, right?

Justin Lake: Well, I disagreed coming into it, but maybe not at the end. Yeah.

Steve Reiner: And you hear these, oh, you're only as strong as your weakest link. We've learned these things growing up in business. But what I found in not only just leading change, and I call it this law of groups. I don't know. I've searched for it. don't know. It must exist out there. This I'm going to have to say now, the Reiner law of groups. Maybe I will put my name on something. But I found it no matter what we're doing. If there's a group involved, whether it's five people, 50 people, 500 people, It doesn't matter. It is the same percentages again, give or take. You're gonna have your 20 % of the people that come through. You're gonna have your 20 % of the people who gonna stick their feet in the sand and say, way. And then you're gonna have these people in the middle, which is your largest part, the largest part of your population who are willing. They have tried, but they just need a lot more support. And when you even talk like in the first book in leaders created, like I really spend a lot of time talking about, you know, because I, found that like people, when you ask people what motivates you, nine out of 10 will say money. And I've got so many examples where money's not the motivator. Like, yes, we all want money. Yes, we all want, of course. But when it comes down to it, like what really motivates us, money's not it. It's very short term or once the money's gone, the motivation's gone. And so in that, I said, wow, if nine out of 10 people don't know what motivates them, yet my job as a manager is to understand what motivates people. That's what set me down this journey to start understanding leadership, management, influence. And what I found was that people really want, yes, we want money, of course, but what they really want, what's going to really engage people. All right, we spend billions of dollars on employee engagement, yet we have an employee engagement problem in corporate America. So like money's not the answer. And what I found was that people want your time. There is nothing greater you can give another human being than your time. They want to be cared for. They want a thought partner. They want somebody to brainstorm with them. They want somebody to work with them, not just bark at them and send them emails and tell them to do stuff. They want somebody to help them. I remember I didn't understand that people wanted help early on in my career. I thought people just wanted us to do it for them. But then I found out, it's like, no, no, people really just want us to sit down. They'll do it. They just don't know on their own. They need somebody to talk to. And so I started realizing and seeing this in so many of the things that I was doing that like, you have these early adopters, you have these people that are gonna wait to the bitter ends for many reasons. But how do we help these people who have shown the willingness and just need to be cared for? They need our time. But most leaders like we hear, and that's why I called Stamina, they're too busy to do this. They're too busy to sit down. They're too busy to have one-on-ones. They're too busy to be involved. So I really put it on the leaders to make the time to help this the largest part of their population, which is actually the easier ones to come along. Your resisters are gonna take you the longest, right? To get this middle part, to come along by just giving them some of your time and attention. Now some will argue.

Justin Lake: Yes.

Steve Reiner: Your time is your most valuable asset. But as a leader, what are you here for? What is your time for if it's not to help lead people through a process? I just think we've got a few things backwards. that's why I put my take on it. And that's where I talked about what the largest part of the population. And now how do you get the 80 % to come through? And then those resisters really have a decision.

Justin Lake: Well, and you talk about this, the game of chicken with the resistor. So you said, you know, the last 10 or 20 % or so, there's a game of chicken with leadership. So I guess my question for you is like, what does it look like when the leader actually wins that game? We talk about this a lot with customers at Skillful when we always engage and we say, well, what does success look like? And, you know, if a leader was to say to us, well, 100%, you know, it's like all or nothing, that's

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: probably not realistic in most cases, right? It's probably a sign that there's an unrealistic expectation here. So is there ever a point where leaders should accept partial adoption and move on like understanding that some of these resisters are just not going to come online and what happens to them?

Steve Reiner: Right. Right. So that's why that step four is leaders reinforced for a very long time because no, that's why it's a game of chicken. The first one who gives up loses, right? So either the leader's gonna give in and let them continue their old way and not adopt, or the employee's gonna give in. And listen, we're talking sometimes rational, irrational. Like I've seen employees before they change and adopt in the current situation. They will leave the company, go to a new company under new management, new pay structure, new rules, new everything, right? And have to change there. But remember, we do it on our own terms, right? That's when people will change. That also is an extreme example. People will change. They will just do it their own way. And so if you can get those early adopters to come along, you could give that largest population your time, your attention, your care, get them to come along. The resisters though are gonna take a lot more time. And for me, there's only so many, that's why I talk a lot about one-on-ones. Because you can hide in a big group meeting, you can even hide in a team of five meeting, right? You've got the same people that talk up, speak up, the same people that don't say anything, other people chime in. But there's something about those resisters at the end, again, after you get the population through. You sit down and look at them and tell them, we're doing this and I'm here to help you. and you have a reoccurring one-on-one to come back. I'm telling you, it won't be more than three times. It won't be more than three. By the third meeting, they will start adopting. However, it's gonna take the leaders effort to put the time on the calendar, to take the time out of their day, to sit down. Now, I'm not saying the leader, you could say, I'm not talking about the CEO has to six levels down meeting. I'm talking, there's somebody with the influence and the scope who's going to work with the... layers of management who are going to get this time on the calendar who are going to by the time someone comes back for the third time and looks you in the face and says I'm not doing this like I'm not that they're going to have a decision to make right like I'm not going to have to do it they're going to have to make their own decision right is if you're going to come along or and I'm telling most come along it's just that we we let them flander out there you know or we let them just hang out there and we don't We don't put it on them for them to make the decision and help them and understand when you sit down and say, what's keeping you from doing this? That's where we could get into that individualized attention. We can help that person come along. But if we did that, to your point, early on, now we've only got 20%, but we still got 60 % of the people still wondering. So that's why I say focus on the first 80%. Then you're going to spend your time getting this. And look, this is a perfect scenario, we know, to your point. We're not getting everybody coming. Look, these things are moving. And by the time you get through maybe even 50, 60%, there's already another change you're launching. So this is in a perfect world. You're doing this one thing, and this is all you're doing. But this is very fluid. Hence, why you need some sort of process, some sort of framework. I say, if it's not this, use whatever framework you have. But most leaders I've talked to, they don't have a framework.

Justin Lake: Totally. Yeah, well, I think that the story you just described, you know, kind of validates the point when you get to those resisters that are having a hard time coming along. If if we can show them in part, or they will have seen themselves that the other 80 percent of their colleagues are on board, they've seen they've seen by this point that I or others as leaders are on board and we're reinforcing the behavior that we're asking. so the only holdouts.

Steve Reiner: Yeah, right, the peer pressure. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: are you this minority population that's just holding back, then like you said, they're either gonna fall in line or they're gonna fall out. Just to support, I chuckled when I read this part of your book, as you talked about the fact that some people are gonna leave and kind of the irony of that is they're gonna have change in the new place that they go to. I've actually seen this happen. And it was actually in kind of a related business to what you're doing. It was in food and beverage distribution.

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: And we were talking to a customer, they said they actually had people leaving in anticipation of the new handheld deployment, because they didn't want to have to endure the change of the new handhelds, the new, you know, the mobile computers, whatever they were. And, and so I said, Well, where are they going? And they said, Well, they're actually all going to another food and beverage company. I said, they have handhelds too. And those are going to be different than the ones that they're using here. But you hit the nail on the head. It was like,

Steve Reiner: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: but damn it, they were gonna make that decision that they were gonna go somewhere else and use a completely different tool with a completely different process and all those things are gonna change, but it was gonna be their decision to do that. And to those people, I say, you gotta let them go, right? you're probably never gonna change their mind. And so you're just gonna burn a lot of energy and probably burn some culture equity trying to save them and there's probably not a lot of safe. So some people,

Steve Reiner: yeah.

Justin Lake: might just have to leave. Maybe this is the kind of final straw that drives them away. And if you're doing your job as a leader, you'll be able to go recruit replacements that are going to be better and more adaptable team members that will absorb that next change coming down the pipe. I just I wanted to validate that part of the story because I didn't just read about that today. I've seen it firsthand in the field and just thought, gosh, that's it's crazy. But you know, humans are humans and some of us are just weird.

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're you know, while human I mean human beings were all just fascinating creatures and that's where I fell in love with leadership and people like we we are just we are just fascinated and look at what we do and look at what we don't do and decisions we make and and that's what I love people say what do you love about your job? The greatest thing I love about my job is like how do we move large groups of people in a direction that we need to move as an organization and I'm talking about for our own survival businesses about survival anymore and

Justin Lake: It is. Yeah.

Steve Reiner: And so we can all take care of ourselves and take care of our families and so we can survive and come work here another day. And it's fascinating, human beings. Definitely, we are irrational. Well, but back to where, like this whole, like when people are slow to adopt a change, like why we are creatures of habits, like this goes back to when I talk about it and some people laugh, because I always go to this story like,

Justin Lake: And as you say, it's sometimes irrational. We are irrational creatures at times, right? Yeah.

Steve Reiner: 10,000 years ago when we were being chased by lions in the jungle, we had to always conserve some energy to escape for survival, right? And so I think our brains over evolution hasn't caught up that fast. We're still wired to conserve energy. And I think the way it shows today, it's not if we see a shaking bush, it's how do we move through our day from muscle? Imagine if we had to think about every move we made from the time we opened our eyes and got out of bed and brushed our teeth and went downstairs and. put on our slippers and every, we wouldn't get out of the house. We'd have to take a nap. We'd be exhausted if we have to think about, and then we got in the car and we wouldn't make it. Our brains couldn't handle that kind of friction and kind of energy. So we have to move on habit, right? To conserve that energy. Now we have enough energy so we can drive home and have dinner with our families, not so we can survive and not have a lion eat us, right? A little different, but. once I understood again I said why do people change slow like why do human beings resist change like what and when I started understanding the brain more and started reading and listening I spent years listening and learning and reading a lot about the brain when it comes to leadership and leading change and so many other things I started to really understand and when that gives me empathy like I understand why it's not this we just don't want to change and there's reasons why people are stuck and so it's for me to understand how our brains are wired, where we come from, what we need to help move people through. can't just blame them and throw my hands up in the air and use a leader's excuse. Right? I have to figure out what's going on so I can help them. Nine out of nine and a half out of 10 times, it's just that people need more time and attention from us. And that's why the leader needs to understand the change better than them so they can help guide them, clear roadblocks, explain things, call out bluffs, know, and myths and. and it really just takes a deep understanding of people.

Justin Lake: think one of the other myths and I want to wrap up on this topic that I think is, I think I've said this about a few topics, but I was going to say this is maybe one of the most important. So maybe it's one of the top three most important topics, but I see this a lot. I see this a lot in our business, which is this idea that change is a point in time problem. And it's not, and I'm actually,

Steve Reiner: Thank you.

Justin Lake: getting tired of having the conversation because it's so obvious that it's not. And yet every day I talk to really, really smart leaders who have been otherwise very effective in their respective businesses. But they do look at change as a point in time or like, hey, this is gonna happen over 90 days. And it's frustrating to me for the people on the other side of that leader, the people that work for them. Because if the leader is looking at this as a point in time, they're leaving out something that's very important, which is the whole sustainment, what you describe as the reinforcement piece. so, most companies declare victory at Go Live. And so everybody gets hyper-focused on day one. Like we're gonna launch this thing. And in their minds, they're imagining that things are gonna go super well.

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: And if they don't, then there's some remediation and we try and get back on track. But it's actually still like we're trying to get back to what we should have done on day one. And in reality, day two and beyond, that whole sustain phase is long. And you say this in the book, and I agree with this completely, it's always longer than you think it's going to be. And you say in the book, you make the case that it could be months or even years.

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Right. yeah, way long. Bye.

Justin Lake: What does that look like for a frontline team? Like what cadence should leaders commit to before they ever flip the switch? And I would argue if you're not planning to support this in that reinforcement stage, you shouldn't do the change. Then maybe it argues that the change wasn't important enough to implement in the first place, right? You make that point in a slightly different way in the P &L section actually later, which is if you're not going to support all of this,

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Right.

Justin Lake: then was a change important enough to do? But from a sustainment phase, what cadence should the leaders commit to? What should they be doing during this phase?

Steve Reiner: You have it? Well, so that's why that that's step four of the framework, is really the start of it, right? Steps one through three was about a 90 day phase learning, communicating, launching. Then leaders reinforced for a very long time. It just depends on the size of the change. We're still reinforcing change from seven years ago, right? Depending on the size of the platform, depending on the size of the change. Look, even a simple new form that we put out, hey, use this form instead of that form. It is unbelievable how many people. can't find the old form. And it happened to me a few weeks ago. We launched a new dashboard. I had the link. I went to the link a couple of times. Then I went back and said, link not found. And I tried it a couple of times over a week or two, link not found. I didn't bother to say, hey, is there a new link? I just stopped going. Then it comes up a couple of weeks later, hey, you need to use this And so even me, we're all just human beings. There was a little bit of resistance. This link I had didn't work. And I just said, all right, it'll come up again. And I moved on, right? Look at your trash can. It took you 10 days to just get out of the habit of going to that one place to throw your garbage. So just imagine what it is for a frontline when you really flip something that you're doing on its head. you know, talk about a major, you know, implementation. It is a very long time. And that's why I call it out. Like I'm trying to be really clear. Honest like there's nothing this is from one leader to another like if you want to do this, right? like this is what it takes and That's why in that part I write a lot about one-on-ones leaders having one-on-ones with their directs and those directs having one-on-ones because at that point now you need to personal personalized attention, right? I didn't know where that link was someone else had that link just didn't know how to navigate around someone else got into it, but they could see the data but then they didn't know how to action the data right like you could probably find three people of my peers all in a different place with that one example. And so that's why those one-on-ones now are so critical because everybody, after a month, after three months, after six months, now they're gonna really be in different places. And look, the people who have adopted and moved on, you can move on from, right? They've got it. But like I said, how how easy is it for us to revert right back? to this comfort zone if it's there. Now if it's a change that that comfort zone's not there anymore, right, they're gonna have to find another way. But if there's a way for them to get back into their old comfort zone, it's gonna happen, and that could happen even after three months. The minute they meet any resistance, we still need to go through our day, right? We figure out, and we create habits in seconds when we launch a new hire after onboarding. they start creating habits like in minutes. they start creating how they're gonna work. So if we don't define how they should work, what platforms they should use, how they should schedule their days, if we don't lay that out and define that for them, they're already creating that habit day one because they need to be able to get through their day and have enough energy to get back home, right? Back to all that. So when the leaders understand that and when they can look at it in that kind of length, like when they can say, wow, like this is something I'm gonna have, depending on the calendar you use, the reoccurrence button is my favorite. Like nothing good happens once ever. is not tell me one thing in life and I hope somebody can come up with what is something great that happened that one time, right? Like normally we're either building up to a skill, we're building up to wealth, we're building up to something, we're going to school, there's something that we have to do over and over again till we get to this great place. And so nothing great happens one time. So everything I do is all on reoccurrence. Any meeting I'm going to put on the calendar is reoccurring because like I said, every time I get in front of a group again, someone's looking at me, someone asks a question, like it's the first time they're hearing it, even though it's the 10th time that we're talking about it. And I've learned, I don't get frustrated. Like I know that that is how human beings are. And so I need to adjust to them because they are not going to adjust to me. I could demand it. I can be loud about it. can, you know, I love the leaders that get up and talk about this change is here. It's not going anywhere. I never saw one time that worked, right? And, it's not going anywhere, let me get on board. Like never has that ever caught soapboxing, you know, with leaders. Soapbox about how important it is. but that's really, I mean, kind of giving you this long kind of roundabout thing, because to your side, there is no one answer, there's no one, it's just having that mindset and that openness that this is going to take a long time. People are challenging, we are all stubborn. Show me one leader who's not stubborn, you know, stuck in their way, you know. So that's what we're leading people through. that's what takes. And depending if you're leading 10 people or 1,000 people, that's going to change your length of time too. So it's just a very long time. And that's why I wanted to spell that out. But again, it's hard to define exactly how much time. It depends on the size, the scope, the number of people, and what kind of disruption it's causing.

Justin Lake: Yeah. Well, I think maybe a good way to wrap up on that point is while we may not be able to define the exact amount of time that will be required in that reinforcement phase, the more time we invest on the front end before we make the change, the more leadership is engaged before we make the change, it will certainly cause that reinforcement period to be shorter, not longer. So it's probably not going to go away. It's probably still going to require some attention after the change, but

Steve Reiner: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Lake: If we can invest early, if we can get the right participation from the right stakeholders in the organization to participate, then we can create more change with less disruption to the business. And that's the thing. this is why I love, again, we've already kind of covered the P &L piece of this, but you wrap the book up on the P &L piece, which is to say, well, the whole reason we're doing this is either drive down cost or improve revenue.

Steve Reiner: Yep. Yeah.

Justin Lake: approved customer experience, approved associate experience, all the key metrics that we're trying to track as a business. If not, if it's not one of those things, we probably shouldn't be making the change. So if it was important enough for us to make this change, it should be important enough to do all that with as little disruption as possible. And I think your framework, you know, creates at least a viable path to being able to do that more effectively. So I appreciate you writing it. I appreciate you sharing the story.

Steve Reiner: Yeah.

Justin Lake: And I do like to give folks that are out there kind of putting themselves out, writing books and offering their services, how would people get in touch with you? How do they find the book? And how can they engage with you after today?

Steve Reiner: Yeah. No, awesome. You can go to leaderscreated.com, all one word. Book is available on Amazon. If you Google Steve Reiner, you can see both of them. There's a contact me on the website. I'm on LinkedIn. I post regularly there. I'd love any engagement. So we can connect there. There's plenty of ways to get in touch. Or it's steve at leaderscreated.com.

Justin Lake: I love it. Steve, I might have to buy a couple copies of this book for some skillful customers and prospects. maybe I can work on a volume discount with you. Steve, thanks so much for sharing your story today. It's been great getting to know you a little bit more and I look forward to staying in touch with you.

Steve Reiner: Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for sure. Thank you. Yes. All right, Justin. Hey,