Dr. Yes - Double-o-Change Management

In the ancient Chinese story about Mulan (popularized by the Disney movie), the titular character is faced with a nonsensical challenge. She is smart, strong, hard-working, strategically adept, and a great leader - in other words, she’s the perfect military commander - but is refused her father’s position in the army because of long-held norms of women being unable to serve. Mulan solves this challenge by disguising herself as a man and then slowly sets out to prove her worth. She faces a lot of resistance along the way, but through demonstrating her abilities and the impact of her actions (long and distinguished military service), she earns the trust and respect of her peers and superiors, until she is finally able to drop the disguise and reveal - to everyone’s surprise - that she’s actually a woman.

In addition to being a powerful reminder not to judge a book by its cover - and while most women thankfully no longer need to disguise themselves to pursue their ambitions and dreams - the challenge of bias and misaligned information (“women are <insert your stereotype of choice here>”) and hesitancy to change illustrated in this story still persists and plays out millions of times every day. At best, it results in indecision over where to get dinner. At worst - and in a professional setting - it can get in the way of the acquisition and adoption of processes or tools that would otherwise objectively create value and return on investment, make peoples’ lives easier, or, generally, be what economists like to call a Pareto improvement: something that makes someone better off without making anyone worse off. 

Demo automation is one such area where a lack of willingness to change (caused at least partially by biases and misaligned information) often gets in the way of value-adding tools being acquired and adopted. As someone who has successfully embedded demo automation in a large organization and learnt this lesson the hard way, I’ll be writing 3 articles over the next weeks where I’ll share my key learnings about how to succeed with Demo automation, whether you wield formal authority in your organization or not (it makes things easier, but is not strictly required). Each article will contribute to a “framework” of sorts so that after having read each article, you should not only have the full picture, but also a pretty good concrete idea of where to start and what you need to do in your own organization. Ready to get started? 

The problem

Let’s begin with some context - the field of Demo Automation is particularly susceptible to “the Mulan problem” because it is an area where misunderstanding (or even lack of understanding) is so prevalent, and because people (especially experienced people) are hesitant to change the way they work.

Sales leaders don’t understand how it works and think it’s a replacement for their Pre Sales reps (it’s not). Presales leaders think it’s a substitute for the work their teams do (it’s actually complementary to their teams and boosts their efficiency). Sellers think it’s a replacement for live customer engagements and relationship-building (it’s not - if only I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I want a relationship, not an automated demo”...). Other functions under the broader revenue umbrella, like (Field) Marketing, Sales Strategy, Sales Programs, and Sales Enablement, don’t even know it exists, much less how it could help them achieve their own goals. As someone who has experienced - and solved - these challenges, and having had the opportunity to speak to and learn from those who have come before me (both the successful and unsuccessful ones), I’m intimately familiar with this. It’s really hard! (And we haven’t even gotten into the fact that our friends in Finance and Procurement don’t understand the value proposition, and - because no one else does either - no investment even gets made).

Why? Because when you’re trying to drive adoption of something that people don’t understand, you run into (at least) two challenges: 1) the bias/misinformation challenge illustrated in the Mulan story, and 2) the fact that you’re asking people to change, and people don’t like to change. In fact, most people are naturally resistant to change (because the status quo is easy and comfortable, and changing is inconvenient and mentally taxing, especially when you’re busy), so of course driving them to success with something they don’t understand is an enormous challenge! You can easily identify other challenges too, but to me, they are all secondary to the fact people don’t like to change their beliefs nor their behaviors. If you can convince someone that something is in their interest and then make it easy for them to realise that potential - across teams, departments, roles and functions - the rest just clicks and the proverbial confetti and fireworks start to burst from the walls. It’s like a well-oiled V10-era Formula 1 engine running on all cylinders. 

The solution (or, at least, part of it)

So having established these primary challenges, what can we do to solve them? The attentive reader (who bothered to read, and hopefully appreciate, this article’s pun-tastic title) will already know that there is a whole discipline dedicated to just that, namely, that of change management - the art of changing beliefs and behaviours. Just like we can lead a horse to water with a handful of hay, we can lead people to do what we want them to do with the right incentives. Designing and finding the appropriate proverbial carrot (or stick!) is a little more challenging when dealing with people than with animals, but the same principles apply - we’re all guided by incentives, whether those are satisfying primary needs, reducing cognitive burden, seeing a big number tick into your bank account, or something else entirely.

Knowing all this, how might we proceed? Thankfully, many people have tried (and succeeded) before us. Change management is part art, part science, and in a sea of frameworks and approaches, I personally like and have had success with Kotter’s 8 Steps for Change. The primary reasons for this are:

• It was created from, and tested extensively with, real people solving real challenges in real companies - not created by a researcher in a laboratory
• It’s easy to understand and apply - principles are great, but no one has time to read academic journals and translate them into action
• It’s designed to be completed in a sequential, step-by-step manner - meaning it’s very easy to work with, distribute tasks and actions, and assess how you’re doing along the way
• (I’ve used it, and it works!)

In a nutshell, the Kotter framework aims to help practitioners prepare (Steps 1-3), execute (Steps 4-6), and consolidate (Steps 7 and 8) change in an organization.

One of the best, and most successful, examples of change management in action, is the fall of Blockbuster and the rise of Netflix. Netflix also started out as a DVD rental company on the eve of the popularization of the Internet. Blockbuster was the market leader and was comfortable in that position, failing to see the advent of streaming services as a threat to their business model and getting too comfortable. Netflix, through the foresight and visionary leadership of its CEO Reed Hastings, capitalized on the opportunity and drove a sweeping business model change from DVD to digital - and the rest is history. Netflix succeeded in large part due to successful change management, while Blockbuster simultaneously failed due to their inability to change. 

Intrigued? Keep reading!

While the changes you drive in your (personal or professional) life are unlikely to be as societally defining as Netflix vs Blockbuster, the underlying principles and mechanics will be similar - whether you’re a Disney princess, a business leader, a hangry partner, or someone trying to succeed with Demo Automation. In the next article, I’ll give you an overview of what the preparation steps are as well as practical examples and tips for employing them, so you can start to benefit from them yourself - and use them to your own advantage, much like a true Change Agent would.

See you in the next one!