Facilitating change and navigating change fatigue with agency employees with Jenny Magic

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build A Better Agency podcast presented by a white label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, drew McClellan.

Speaker 2 (00:36):

Hey everybody. Drew McClellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. Thanks for coming back if you’re a regular listener, and if you are new to the show, welcome. Glad to have you. Uh, before I tell you a little bit about our guest, I wanna remind you about a free resource that we have. Uh, we put out a newsletter every week. Uh, it’s pretty short and sweet. Uh, it’s usually a note or a letter from me to something that’s on my mind or something that I think, uh, you need to be aware of. And then, uh, the video of the week that I shoot, which is a two to three minute tip for you as agency owners and leaders. There’s a link to that. Uh, and then usually there’s some information about some workshops we have coming, or, you know, for example, the link to the AI webinar we did was in this week’s newsletter.

Speaker 2 (01:25):

So all information, uh, designed to be helpful and useful to you. And if you are not receiving that newsletter, the easiest way to get it is to go over to agency management institute.com. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the homepage. And under the free resources, you’re gonna see a couple links. You’re gonna see the podcast, the blog, but you’re gonna see our newsletter. And if you just click on that, you can sign up for the newsletter and start getting it every week. All right. Hopefully it’s helpful to you, uh, on a regular basis. I love hearing back from folks, uh, when they read it and they have something to say. So it’s a great way to just hit reply and, and let me know what you’re thinking as well. So, all right. Uh, let me tell you a little bit about our guests, but before I do, I want to talk about the idea of change.

Speaker 2 (02:10):

You know, um, I think change has always been a part of our reality. I think that in agency life, as in life in general, but particularly in agency life, the one constant we have is change. We are often the leaders of change. We are often helping clients recognize they need to change and helping them drive to that change. But we also internally, constantly have to be learning. We talk a lot about if we aren’t learning and we aren’t experimenting with new things, whether it’s a discovery model or it’s a new AI tool, or whatever it is, we can get irrelevant in a heartbeat. And so change is a constant, but we’ve had so much change in our lives with the great recession and then covid, and now the economy, the way it is now, and the changes in the workforce, how we work, where we work, what our employees are, and aren’t willing to do all of this huge change.

Speaker 2 (03:04):

Uh, and we’re still trying to help clients manage change on their side too. So change is a constant for us, but it’s also exhausting. And so my guest is a woman named, uh, Jenny Magic, and Jenny and a co-author wrote a book called Change Fatigue Flip Teams from Burnout to Buy-In. And it is a fantastic book. First of all, highly recommend it. And she is brilliant. And so several people, uh, we know several people in common. Several people recommended the book to me. I read it, and I knew I needed to get her on the show. And I needed you to hear some of her smarts around how to facilitate and encourage and support change. So I don’t wanna spend any more time, uh, introducing her cuz I want her to have as much time as possible to teach us all the things she knows about, not only the change fatigue we’re feeling, but how to overcome it so that we can be facilitators of the kind of change that our game changers inside our organization and for our clients. So let’s get going. Jenny, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3 (04:18):

My pleasure. I’m happy to be here.

Speaker 2 (04:21):

So tell everybody a little bit about your background and how you came to write the book Change Fatigue.

Speaker 3 (04:27):

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been a marketing professional and consultant for almost 20 years, and a lot of that has been, um, in agency settings, uh, either alongside or employed by agencies trying to get, um, fantastic strategies to be implemented by the teams that they worked with and the clients that hired them. And one of the frustrations I found is, um, a lot of times the boss was really happy with the strategy they’d bought, but the team behind that boss wasn’t ready to do anything with it. And there wasn’t really an implementation strategy or any plan for resourcing the change. And I just got really frustrating to think about my legacy being a whole bunch of strategies that never got implemented. So we thought about what made the difference and spent a few years practicing that with a number of major clients and big projects. And, um, I think we hit on something that’s worth sharing. So that that’s where we, we came to the writing the book.

Speaker 2 (05:21):

And how has the world of change changed? You know, the, I, you and I were talking before I hit the record button and I was saying that, you know, fatigue, the level of fatigue I think that we’re seeing in agencies amongst the leaders, amongst the staff is really unprecedented. So you had done a lot of this work pre C O V I D and, and all of the craziness that we’ve all ex, you know, experienced over the last few years. But, but what have you seen, what, you know, take what you’ve learned, what you practiced, and then overlay the reality today? And, and how has that changed things from your perspective?

Speaker 3 (06:01):

Absolutely. So I think there’s a couple things at play. Um, on the positive side, change management, what I think of as like capital C, capital m change management that you think of as like six figure multi-year engagements, um, have become more accessible. And so the tools of change are more available for lots of different smaller kinds of change. So on the positive, um, the industry has, has become a place where there’s a lot more dialogue happening, um, on smaller changes like rolling out a new project management system or, you know, putting six siloed teams in the same website project. It’s important and good that that’s happening because as you mentioned, the crisis of the pandemic that we lived through left the workforce changed, uh, I think in a permanent way at least, um, in a long term way, is what we’re feeling. And what we’re seeing is that leaders especially, um, you know, top level leaders are really ready for things to get back to business as usual.

Speaker 3 (06:58):

And unfortunately, the workforce, um, completely burned out, really figured out what they were capable of, um, found some new boundaries. And while the boss is saying, uh, let’s business as usual, the workforce is saying never again. And the interesting part is that the team in the middle, the folks who are receiving these instructions from the top and managing the workforce down below are really, really stuck in a complicated position because they used to be able to sort of say, well, you know, it’s for the good of the team, or, you know, the CEO’s insisting, or, you know, we really gotta do this. And people would maybe begrudgingly fall in line, but they would do the work. And, um, that begrudgingly has turned into no thanks. Um, right. And sometimes more firmly, go ahead and fire me <laugh>. Right? That’s really painful.

Speaker 2 (07:43):

Yeah, it really is. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about how does one look at a change that they are, they’ve landed on from a 30,000 foot level. And then what do I do with it next to actually line it up so that it actually gets implemented? What, what do, what do, what were we doing wrong and what do we need to do different?

Speaker 3 (08:07):

Absolutely. I think that’s a really great question. I think the, the most important sta um, point is to back up and think before you know, the solution mm-hmm. <affirmative> before we know what the change is, it’s really, really important to make sure that the people who will be impacted by the solution agree that there’s a problem. So a lot of times these change initiatives feel like a solution in search of a problem, or somebody at one level somewhere has a problem that needs solving. It doesn’t impact a lot of people. The problem doesn’t, but the solution to fix that is gonna impact a lot of folks. And that can be really painful for folks to feel like they’re being asked to go through a whole, uh, process of changing the way they do their work or, you know, any deliverables. Um, so that one person somewhere else doesn’t feel a pain that didn’t impact me before.

Speaker 3 (08:53):

So, um, I think it’s really important to ask why this problem is urgent enough to use some of our, what I like to call change tokens on mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you only get so many opportunities to ask people to change. Uh, they’re only gonna sign up for so many initiatives. And so, you know, use them sparingly, be really thoughtful about the ways that we can solve the problem. Um, so I think bringing people in early to the problem definition, uh, a lot of leaders don’t really love doing that cuz it feels like letting their team, you know, peek behind the curtain and, and see some of the underlying, you know, issues and challenges. They’d really rather just like do that behind closed doors and then roll out mm-hmm. <affirmative>, this is how we’re moving forward. Um, that transparency and that vulnerability is critical to get your workforce to believe in the change. And unfortunately, um, that uncomfortable zone is a place that leaders are gonna have to grow into if they want their workforce to come along willingly instead of having to be forced into these changes. So that’s the first step is make sure you’re solving the right problem.

Speaker 2 (09:56):

You know, it’s interesting as I’m listening to you, you know, one of the things that I think business owners in general, but agency owners for sure, you know, they are, they are voracious readers and learners. And so, so often in an agency, and I remember this when I was an employee long before I owned my own agency, eons ago, boss would read a book or listen to a podcast, and all of a sudden that’s like, everybody gets a copy of the book and we all have to do the thing, whatever the thing is, like, I, whatever it is. And as an employee, and I even watched my employees do it with me, there was always this, mm, I don’t think this is gonna stick. So, and, and I don’t even think this is a problem. I don’t think we have to do go fish or do the whatever the book of the, the month was, right. And you would just watch everybody kinda tread water because they knew that it was a moment and they didn’t actually have to make the change or adopt the change. But to your point, part of it was because there was never a conversation before the book was delivered to your desk that the boss thought there was a problem. And did you agree mm-hmm. <affirmative> or are you experiencing it too? And would you like to participate in making it better?

Speaker 3 (11:06):

Absolutely. You said something really important there around treading water and, um, one of the things that we’ve seen and the research bears out is that, um, especially with knowledge work where we’re not measuring how many widgets you spit out at the end of the day mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, it is really easy to sandbag a project with a smile. It is really easy to sort of go like, yeah, boss, I’ll read the book totally. I I I’m here for it and tread water and to not make forward movement. And I think that’s one of the things we’re seeing a lot of puzzlement come from upper management around. You know, everybody smiles and they say they’re on board and, and they get along, but like, nothing’s, we’re not seeing the results. We’re not getting the outcome we want. And it’s like, they’re probably not really honestly on board with this. Right. And that’s a place where you have to sort of rewind, get that buy-in and make sure they really feel like, you know, this is worth their time and attention to come along willingly.

Speaker 2 (11:57):

So is there a, a best way or a better way to take that step back and talk about what you perceive to be a problem to gut check if other people are struggling with it too?

Speaker 3 (12:10):

I mean, I think this is just organic and, and dependent on the culture of the team you’re in, but I think it really just comes down to, um, are the people that are going to be impacted aware that we have a problem? So if you’re like, okay, we definitely need to get better at this, it’s gonna mean a new system, a new tool, a new process that’s gonna mean these, this group of people are gonna have to do something differently if you can sort of project into the future and make sure those people who are impacted don’t feel surprised at the solution. So I think it, it often starts with small groups at the top, you know, pressure testing. Like, is this something we care about? I think an important question leaders fail to ask is, how much money are we willing to put behind solving this?

Speaker 3 (12:47):

Because a lot of times there’s a pain point we go through this process, we sort of come up with a solution. Maybe there’s like an R F P for a new tool, and then there’s like, oh, we don’t have budget for that. It’s so much smarter when you’re feeling an itch or feeling a pain and like, we ought to do something different to say, I want us to, I’ll read this book and do this different and I’m willing to put X thousand dollars behind training, implementation, uh, outsourcing work that’s gonna need to pause while we stop and do this change thing. Like, mm. There’s always all change has a cost. And so if a leader’s like, yeah, I definitely want this to change and I’m willing to put no time and no resources behind it, then it’s an instant no because you know that there’s not gonna be that support and it’s just gonna get like the smile and tread water. Right.

Speaker 2 (13:30):

Well, and it seems like it’s not just about money, right? It’s also about time. Like, how much time, how much of my people’s time am I willing to invest? So, you know, back to what you were saying about the workforce changing, you know, I can remember a time when I was younger in my career and my boss would do the same thing that I eventually did, which was I read a book on a plane and brought it back and it was, you know, the holy grail and it was gonna fix everything. But we got assigned the book and we were supposed to read it on our own time, right? Because we didn’t get time off to read the book. We didn’t get, there was no time to have the team meeting or whatever. And I think sometimes agency owners are still expecting their folks to do a lot of this kind of work in the off hours.

Speaker 2 (14:14):

And I think it’s part of the pushback they’re getting that you mentioned, which is, you know, the, the workforce is saying, look, I, I am setting different boundaries than you did when you were at your stage of when you were at my stage of your career, when you were working 60 and 70 hours and everybody knew that you didn’t leave the office till the boss left the office, or whatever it is that all of that’s changed. And so I think it’s not only I’m gonna invest the money, but also how am I gonna allocate time during the workday and for how long and for what people to actually implement this kind of change.

Speaker 3 (14:49):

Absolutely. Uh, you know, we like to say it’s very unlikely that your staff is sitting around like 20% of their time with nothing to do. Right? Like they’re probably fully booked. Um, and all change takes time, even if it’s just the mental processing time to like adapt and, and rethink a process. Um, so again, if you’re, if you are putting something new on their plate, what are you taking off? What are you pausing? What are you allowing to fall off the radar this month so that they have the time and space to do this? And, and to your point, uh, not only has the sort of mental model about, uh, you know, like staying in the office and the hours in the office and using hours as a, uh, reliable metric about value, but you know, we’re not all in the office anymore, right? There’s a lot more, uh, there’s a lot less time for that FaceTime to be visible and so it’s become an even less valued metric for, for work. Um, and I think it’s really important to sort of think about what you’re really asking of your people and making sure that you’re asking what’s fair. Because if you’re not, they’ll just keep smiling and treading water.

Speaker 2 (15:51):

Right? Right. Okay. So let’s say that I, I have identified a problem as a leader. I have pulled together a team, we’ve had some conversation around the fact that we agree that, that if we could fix this problem or we could find a new efficiency or whatever it is that that would be good for everybody, then what’s the next stage? Do I, if I already think I know the solution, how do I get my team to adopt my solution? Or how do I get us to find a solution that we can all adopt and agree is the best? Like what’s, what’s the process of introducing the change once we agree there should be one?

Speaker 3 (16:36):

Yeah. I, I think co-creating the change is probably more valuable than introducing it if you can. And I think, um, one of the things we talk about in the book is creating an objective decision framework that allows people to say, okay, we’re using these criteria to decide before we put any sample solutions on the table, this is how we will know we have a good solution. Um, sort of like an rfp, right? But internal, yeah. Um, and then we feed the boss’s idea through the system and we feed our idea through the system and hopefully the decision framework sort of spits out some sort of, of hierarchy. We even go so far as to outline the, uh, research strategy known as Pairwise comparison, where you take two criteria and you compare every, every criteria to every other criteria to sort of identify which one’s the most important.

Speaker 3 (17:22):

And you get sort of like coefficient to attach to, like we, you know, the ease of implementation is three times as important as the cost of implementation for this new tool or, or whatever it ends up being. The interesting thing isn’t necessarily the math, the interesting thing is that the boss will say, what’s gotta be fast and it’s gotta get the job done and it’s gotta, you know, it’s gotta be under this budget. And the team will say, and I need a great user experience cuz if it takes me 47 minutes to input every time you want me to fill out this form, it’s not gonna be sustainable. Right. Um, and they’ll come up with lot, the people who are gonna use the tool will come up with more nuanced or, or the change, whatever it is we’re doing. They’ll come up with a more nuanced set of criteria for the solution.

Speaker 3 (18:03):

And the best part is people who help define the criteria for the solution are much more likely to adopt it. Sure. Even if like we threw, we, we put three, uh, three solutions through this decision framework and um, the one that they picked, the, their preferred one didn’t win, they can still often get behind it because they can see like where in the structure of that decision framework mm-hmm. <affirmative> their idea how to weakness. Um, and you know, it just becomes a little bit easier to accept. It does, it’s not personal, it’s subjective. It’s like we actually tried to use a model to think through what we’re gonna do.

Speaker 2 (18:36):

Yeah. Okay. So before we get into like how to implement the change, I’m, cuz I’m thinking about this from a dual perspective. I’m thinking about how we, how we apply this in our own business at our agency, but also to your point, our job as agencies is to help clients make change. I mean, and, and all of us are taking ideas and strategies to clients at a le at some level and they either have to sell it up the food chain or down the food chain. So yeah. How do we take these exact same two steps, which is sort of gets agreement that there is a problem and then sort of pressure test potential solutions. How do you recommend we bring that methodology into a client setting?

Speaker 3 (19:19):

Yeah. So one of the things I think is incredibly valuable in your discovery process is talking to the folks who are gonna be impacted, not just the folks who are gonna see the, you know, like for example, if you’re trying to get, you know, uh, younger investors to interact on social media and become clients of your financial services company, right? Like the people who care about that are in the, the, you know, the, the marketing suite and the metrics and you know, they’re, they’re at the top, but there’s also someone who’s like down at the bottom writing the post, right. Thinking about who’s gonna be impacted and what they know. Um, and our strategy we like to use is, um, we refer to it as confidential inquiry. And you can just imagine from the, that show get smart in the sixties, like the cone of silence coming down.

Speaker 3 (19:58):

Yeah. And we just have these private, private conversations where I’ll get someone on a 30 minute call and I’ll say, look, nothing you say will be directly quoted. Nothing you say will even be attributable to you in any way. We’ll be super careful not to drop hints about where you sit in the org or anything like that. And I’m gonna interview 10 other people in the same context. And the roll up is all anyone’s ever gonna see from this conversation. Um, I have found most of the time I can identify after that early discovery phase conversation with the people who are gonna actually do the work. I can identify, oh, we already tried this and this isn’t gonna work, so I’m not, I’m not doing it. Or, um, they think they’ve got it all figured out, but you’re missing this key set of research that they don’t think is important, but I think is essential. Um, you get all of this like good stuff that they can’t say in the meeting, it would cost them social capital, it would cost them Yeah. A lot to tell

Speaker 2 (20:53):

You. Or they get ignored discovery depending on their role. Right?

Speaker 3 (20:56):

Absolutely. They may not even be in the discovery meeting. Right. Right. And I get like, clients hate paying for discovery and I get it. The the hours it takes for me to understand your problem as the consultant, as the agency, um, feel expensive to the client. And so we have reframed it as actually, um, one of our deliverables is a change readiness assessment. Mm-hmm. And so I need to talk to the people who are gonna be doing the work so that I can predict their readiness to do the work. So unless it, it’s less about discovery and more about, um, building this readiness assessment and mm-hmm. The idea is that if you se can just, um, right. All of it’s semantics, uh, I only talk about discovery internally these days. Right. Not with the clients. Yeah. But to the extent that we can get the client on board with understanding that we wanna talk to the whole, the, the impacted stakeholders, so to speak.

Speaker 3 (21:50):

And then I think the other thing is valuable. Um, you know, like I said, I’ve, I’ve spent almost two decades in marketing and my, uh, specialty was around personas and journey mapping and, and customizing messaging to audience needs. And what we’ve really found fascinating is if you turn that same tool internal to your team, to your client’s team and say, all right, we’re gonna ask them to do this, you know, dramatic strategy shift, who’s on board because this will make their job easier and they’ll get a sunshine and highlights who is gonna resist this? Because they have fears about job security, fears about their own ability to deliver fears about whatever. Right? And it’s almost always fear-based resistance. It’s almost always fear-based. Sure. Um, and thinking about, okay, I know I’m probably gonna be told to have meetings with the Sunshine and Rainbows team because they’re excited, but I need also have meetings with the storm clouds and thunder team and folks.

Speaker 3 (22:40):

And that’s where those confidential inquiries can come in. And then we build a little lightweight journey map to say like, through this change, how are we gonna bring these folks along? And what, you know, I heard in these confidential conversations that this person’s really concerned that, you know, if the shift happens, they’re not gonna get credit anymore. They used to get credit because of this thing they used to deliver. Right. And that that’s not part of the new process. How do we make sure they still feel valued? And that’s a very different question than what does the strategy process need to be, right? But thinking about how the people who are going to do the work need to be, uh, compensated with time and respect and social capital as part of the change process is it’s just a layer on your strategy. And you, you know, most of the folks doing the work probably have the information they need to deliver those insights, but they haven’t been asked to. And it can be sensitive to try to deliver that without a, an understanding upfront.

Speaker 2 (23:33):

Well, and and without having that understanding, it would seem to me that there’s, you only have, you only use one, you only pull one lever of motivation, right. The kind of the rah rah lever, uh, vi Hey you guys, this is gonna be great and you’re on board and here we go and we’re gonna do it. As opposed to there are probably different levers of motivation and encouragement and support that you have to pull with different people to get everybody to do their part, to move the train along the track. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I want to talk more about like how we actually begin to implement the change. But first let’s take a really quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll talk about it first again, internally for our shops. And then how can we take, once we’re good at it internally, how do we turn it into a product or a service for our clients?

Speaker 2 (24:21):

But first let’s take out a really quick break. Hey, there, just a quick interruption. I wanna make sure that you are aware that you are cordially invited, not just invited, but cordially invited to, uh, join our Facebook group, our private Facebook group. All you have to do is go to Facebook and search for Build a Better agency. And you’ll find the Facebook group. You have to answer three quick questions. You have to put in the agency url, you have to talk about, uh, what you wanna learn from the group, and you have to promise to behave yourself. And that’s it. And then we’ll let you in and you can jump into the conversation with over a thousand other agency owners and leaders. And there’s a robust conversation happening every day. Uh, people are sharing resources and best practices and discussing everything from work, from home policies to maternity and paternity policies, to biz dev strategies.

Speaker 2 (25:13):

So come join us and jump into the conversation. Right? Speaking of conversations, let’s head back. All right. We are back and we are talking about facilitating change both inside our organization and with clients. In an era when everybody is pretty worn out from change, there’s been so much change, uh, that we’ve experienced. And you know, as agency folks, you’ve experienced it internally, you’re working differently, your employees look different. Uh, how, how they work, where they work, uh, the number of hours they work, how you motivate them for where all of those things have changed. And we’re also in the middle of a really bumpy year for a lot of you, uh, in terms of clients being really tight-fisted with their money and they’re worried about the economy. And, you know, we’ve got an election chitter chatter going on, at least here in the States and in many other parts of the world.

Speaker 2 (26:07):

So a lot of you are, are feeling like, uh, I am over change. I would like to have no more change for a while. Which of course we know is not practical. So, uh, earlier we were talking about sort of how to, how to get people ready for change to, to happen and to get them, if not at least excited or encouraged at least onboard with the change. So now that we have, we we have agreement that there, the change, whatever the result of the change is, would be valuable. We have an understanding of sort of where everybody in the sort of team, both probably the execution team, but also the team that’s sort of receiving the ball. We kind of know where they’re all sitting and how they’re feeling about it. How do we actually go about implementing the change? Let’s, let’s assume it’s something big, like you mentioned changing a project management system internally or something like that. There really is gonna be months of effort and pretty significant change in the way people work and probably is gonna touch just about everybody in the agency now that we sort of get, now we understand the landscape, we know who the detractors are, the promoters are, we know all of that. How do we actually do it?

Speaker 3 (27:25):

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um, the execution piece is at least in my experience, something that people have pretty well in hand. Like we know the steps it will take to migrate tasks from system A, system B, like there’s a mechanics Sure. Sort of a, a rational front brain step-by-step that that’s sort of, um, outlined in your deliverable, right? Like this is what we’re gonna do. But I think the most important part is that we skip over what skills do people need to be able to do that. Yeah. And what time do people need to be able to do that? So that, that’s two things there. Skills is gonna be about training and time is gonna be about workload prioritization, right? And so what we like to do is think about, um, making a list of everybody that is impacted. This is a stakeholder assessment matrix, is what we call it.

Speaker 3 (28:09):

We love to use Airtable for it. But a simple Excel file we’ll do also, and you’re just thinking like these are the teams or the, the individuals depending on the scale that we’re talking that are gonna be impacted. And, and this team is gonna use this tool every day. They need to go to like intensive, like how to use the tool training. They need to know what we’re doing and what the end result is gonna look like. So like early on I’m gonna go get them the skills to like be a user of this new tool. But then there’s also gonna be people who, um, maybe they’re not in it every day, maybe they’re approvers or requesters, right? And they’re not necessarily like right gonna need like intensive training. So anyway, you start to sort of identify, um, through this listing who’s gonna need training and at what level.

Speaker 3 (28:47):

And one of the, the big mistakes I see leaders making is they simplify their process by making one intensive training and forcing everyone through it instead of thinking about who’s gonna need what Can I put these five people through intensive and these 30 people through a lightweight version on a different day and not waste their time? Because wasting their time to be convenient for your training, uh, for you and the organization of the training costs you, it costs you significantly in their willingness to adopt. And again, they can smile and say they’re adopting and not. So every opportunity we have to push towards willingness instead of compliance, we’re gonna have a better outcome, right? And so I think the first step is just making sure that your training is personalized and appropriate for the needs of a particular group. Um, the second thing I would say is that workforce, uh, work prioritization piece, right?

Speaker 3 (29:40):

So what are those people who are highly impacted doing every day and where are they gonna find the time to go to this training to practice with the tool to talk to you about concerns they have as they’ve gotten into the tool? Oops, maybe we forgot to think about a thing that we need to customize slightly differently, right? Because we all know implementation doesn’t go smoothly and perfectly according to of course not the manual, right? Like there’s, there’s all sorts of things that are gonna need to be talked about and considered and like, I’m feeling this concern. Are you feeling this concern? So the time and space to like get into a change is often not accounted for. And again, um, it’s also not something people can really do after hours. It’s not something they can do by themselves. So if their workday is cram packed to the gills, there’s literally not gonna be any time for that.

Speaker 3 (30:24):

And so whoever’s running the project is just gonna be like, well, I guess we gotta move forward. And then again, you’re just telling people what’s gonna happen instead of bringing them along. I also like to think about this, any major change is a great opportunity to reset people’s work balance between each other on a team. So, um, this is where understanding individual motivations really gets important. And this is where I think your middle managers are often, um, really, really valuable and overlooked for the specific thing. So what I mean by this is, um, some people on your team, for example, are going to be, um, they’re gonna thrive if you put ’em in the front of a meeting or give them the first chance to talk or give them the opportunity for company-wide visibility. That’s something that they want in their profession. It’s something they feel proud and, uh, accomplished when they achieve and they’re excited by it.

Speaker 3 (31:08):

Someone else on that same team and at that same level might absolutely despise being asked to step forward and be visible. Understanding the nuances of people’s motivation and what makes them tick and what makes them excited about their job and wanna come to their job is really critical during a change because it is so easy to look at the org chart and say, okay, we gotta do an all staff about this new project management tool. Um, Jill sits at the top of that team, so Jill is gonna present and it’s just like the shortcut answer, right? Right. Like she’s the person in the right seat in the org chart. So like, make her do it. And that may not be the, the match of motivations. And that example translates through the entire change process, right? Like you got folks that are great at spreadsheets and analytics and um, setting up, you know, sort of checklist type tasks and you have other folks that hate that stuff. And I think it’s really, um, convenient for leadership to assign tasks based on the org chart and it is really yeah. Detrimental to the execution of a sustainable change initiative.

Speaker 2 (32:10):

So you talked about sort of checking in and bringing people together to sort of talk about how it’s going. And one of the things I hear agency owners talk about sometimes, especially when they’re making a big change that feels onerous, like a project management tool change, which you know, just is, seems like a bear of a project, is that they shy away from getting feedback because it turns into a bitch session, right? Like especially when it’s at the really hard of the change mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so how do, how do you facilitate those conversations in a way that doesn’t just end up with everybody complaining and some of the detractors sort of modifying the thinking or the enthusiasm of the people who were on board? Cuz that’s their fear, right? Is that when I bring everybody together and everyone talks about all the problems or how much they hate it or how much harder it is or yada yada yada, then that’s gonna stall the forward movement. So how do we, how do we still get feedback and let people share their thoughts, but do it in a way that doesn’t result in the things that agency owners are afraid of?

Speaker 3 (33:19):

Absolutely. And I think you’re right. The negative group think session should never happen. So we all agree that we wanna avoid that because the pylon venting is not helpful. Um, there’s a couple of things that can prevent, prevent you from getting to that point. I think one is making sure that the problem and solution had the buy-in we talked about earlier, right? Yeah. So if we all agree the problems we’re solving, if we all agree the solution is the best one based on what we knew at the time and we’ve committed to doing it, then sort of like, I don’t wanna do this is off the table, right? And there needs to be sort of a moment where it’s like, we’ve invested, we’re gonna try this for the next three years, you know, we’re on a contract, it’s committed. So like I don’t like it, we’re kind of past that, but hopefully you had enough buy-in throughout that.

Speaker 3 (34:03):

People are like, uh, okay, all right, I’ll give it a chance. And this would be after the decision and before you get in there and start discovering that things are a disaster, right? Right. If things are a true disaster pivot, right? Like if we’ve bought something that didn’t work, then that’s on leadership to try to figure out where did, where did our decision framework go south? But assuming this is just the sort of usual resistance to like, I hate change, you know, one of the things I like to say is all change is loss. So regardless of whether or not I’m moving from a bad thing to a better thing, I’m still leaving where I was before. I’m leaving the safety of that. I’m leaving the, the familiarity and I know what to do and I know what I’m rewarded for. Yeah. Even if it wasn’t great, that loss has to be accounted for in some way and it’s gonna come out in this sort of negativity around change or just defensiveness or slow to adopt.

Speaker 3 (34:50):

That’s where those confidential inquiry sessions really become valuable because the bitch session happens when someone has said it quietly and didn’t feel heard. So it’s because they said it to their boss and their boss went, yeah, you know, I’m brushed it off. Or they, you know, they said it to a coworker and they’re like, well, I mean we gotta do it. So get on board. If they don’t feel heard about the third time they feel that pain is when they wanna get in a meeting and sort of pound the table, right? Yeah. And what we wanna do is have a conversation with anybody that we think is kind of grumbly and that’s where that list of who’s impacted, who’s excited, we like to identify a mindset, right? Like resistor, detractor, you know, where are we at in this whole, um, a flow and make sure that we’re talking to those folks regularly.

Speaker 3 (35:29):

It can be helpful, you know, we come in as outsiders, um, it can be helpful to not be the boss doing these conversations, right? Right. Sure. But the idea is that you would sit down and say, Hey, what do you think about the thing that we’re rolling out? And they’d be like, well, it’s this, this, this, this. And I’m like, that is valuable feedback. You validate it. Uh, you don’t necessarily say that it’s true or you agree with it, but you let them just, it’s, um, I’ve jokingly been called a marketing therapist, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> like this is basically therapy for the change. And so they’re gonna like tell me everything and I’m just gonna, what else? What else, what else? And we just list it until they’re just, they feel heard, it’s all out. Then I say, okay, what I’m gonna do next is do the same kind of conversation with other people who have concerns and then we’re gonna roll up those concerns and present ’em back to you and let you know what we’re hearing from the team that isn’t working.

Speaker 3 (36:13):

I’m gonna roll that list up and I’m gonna go to the boss first and I’m gonna say, wow, your team really feels X, Y, z. Is there any flexibility on this point? Uh, this particular rollout component is like not going well. You know, what do we have to work with? And the boss will either say nothing, we’re stuck exactly where we’re at. I wish it were different, but that’s what we got. Or we’ll have some modifications and then we go to the team and we say, we heard you and it stinks, but we’re stuck. We signed the contract, we can’t do anything to help you, or this is gonna have to stay, but we are working on this piece that we heard. And so you try really hard for those group sessions to be after the resistance has been gathered and after okay, the complaints have been sort of sorted and, and, um, triaged, so to speak, and, and decided like, I know it stinks, but like, this piece has to be like this and here’s why.

Speaker 3 (37:02):

They’re just looking to be heard. Um, get it a reasonable answer from reasonable people who appear to be on the same team. Um, and I think that’s where, you know, oftentimes the, where the rubber meets the road is if the team all feels that there’s a detrimental feature that could be fixed with money and the leadership isn’t willing to spend the money and being able to like wrestle that particular beast down is a tough one. But I think that’s where if you’ve built a team that has psychological safety and can have open conversation and transparency, you know, that’s where those conversations will be easier. So, um, the last chapter of the book is actually talking about healthy team norms and psychological safety that you wanna be working on all the time so that when you do go through a change, you have some of that skillset ready. And I think, um, those two things are kind of hand in glove for making this particular kind of feedback not so uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (37:55):

So let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how do we, because every change isn’t as big as a project management change, but the reality is, you know, in agency life, clients are throwing curve balls to us all the time. Like, change is a daily activity both in our, in our work with clients and in our internal focus of making the agency better. So how do we create a safe place for people to feel seen, heard, open, to change all the things you just said that last chapter. Yeah. How do I, how do I create a culture? Cause you know, how we create culture has changed, right? I mean, to the point we used, we used to have water cooler talk and we all went out for drinks on Thursdays. And you know, a as you know, because you’ve worked in agencies, there was usually a food event at least once a month.

Speaker 2 (38:44):

Some sort of, you know, oh it’s whatever excuse we had to bring food and liquor sure. Into the agency we did. And now we’re scattered across the country or the globe. We are rarely all physically together. And so even culture has dramatically changed in how we create culture. So I think we were, I think we knew in some ways how to create a collaborative safe culture when we were all physically together. And, but now it’s, everything has changed and a lot of us have employees that we’ve never worked side by side physically with at all. So how in today’s world do we create that kind of culture and safe place?

Speaker 3 (39:21):

Absolutely. So I mentioned the phrase psychological safety and I think it’s one that many of your listeners may not be familiar with. So I wanna just touch on that briefly. Back in the nineties, Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson was like, what makes a great team? And she did all this research, her papers available, she’s written a book called The Fearless Organization that outlines it. Um, and she basically came down to this term that she came up with psychological safety that, um, rests on four distinct pillars, which I’ll talk about in just a sec. Interestingly enough, in 2008, Google decided to go about the same experiment sort of independently. They were like, what makes a great team at Google? It’s called Project Aristotle, also really well documented. And, uh, interestingly enough, and something that rarely happens in research in the social sciences, they landed on the exact same answer.

Speaker 3 (40:04):

They were like, it’s this thing called psychological safety. And um, to me, anytime two different and very distinct, you know, in academia and general business converge on like a single concept. It’s a good thing to take notice. Uh, I got certified to benchmark psychological safety in teams. Um, cuz it was really important to me. Psychological safety really comes down to four distinct areas. One is open conversation, can we say what’s on our mind? Uh, two is inclusivity. Can everyone say what’s on their mind? Um, three is willingness to help. So is there the sense of karma? Like, I’ll help you absolutely, because I know you would help me on the flip side versus begrudgingly helping versus actively not helping, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like there’s a spectrum there. And then the fourth one is attitude towards risk and failure. So when we do experiments, which all change is an experiment, there’s no guarantee of this outcome, right?

Speaker 3 (40:51):

That we decide is possible. When we do an experiment and it fails, do we throw people under the bus? Do we look for blame? Or are we a learning organization that takes what we learn from that and implies it into our next experiment? So those are the four domains of psychological safety. And you ask how we do this. I think one of the most important things is get a sense of where your team is. 78%. I think the study shows of leaders overestimate their team’s psychological safety. Yeah, I bet. Um, and again, it’s that smile and sandbag, right? Like they, everyone smiles and comes to the office and doesn’t wanna spend their social capital on negativity. So they don’t, but there’s feelings, right? And so, um, there’s a seven question, three minute test that, you know, it’s like, how do you feel about this? How do you feel about that?

Speaker 3 (41:36):

You ask everyone on the team and then the, the answers are anonymous but correlated on sort of a median graph and it’s, um, it’s a blend of, of subjective and objective conversation. But it’s really interesting to see how far the spread is on any given team. Um, and to have that conversation facilitated. Um, I can see who answered what behind the scenes and I’m anonymous, but I’m trying to lead and guide and pull conversations out. So I think, you know, one of the first things, you can also take that assessment for free at the Fearless Organization, uh, website. So you can kind of go experiment and think about ways that you might incorporate it, even if you’re not ready to like move forward in this way. Um, I think the most important thing you can say is, I’ve learned about a concept that I care about.

Speaker 3 (42:18):

It’s called psychological safety. It’d been, it’s about team performance and how you feel coming to work. So there’s like revenue implications and there’s feelings, implications, and it’s all captured. We’re gonna try to get better at this. It’s gonna be a multi-month, multi-year project. But like, I want you to know that as leadership, we are investing time and energy to, to get better at this, right? So the first is sort of placing a line in the sand and looking, you know, having that self-awareness to know whether or not there are people in your leadership team that actively work against these values, right? Because that’s step one is to make sure that you truly believe these things. Um, if you’ve got leadership that believes I’m the boss and they’re the minions and I don’t wanna hear what they say, that’s something to maybe start crying at, right? Because that attitude is gonna be really disruptive and you’re not gonna be able to, you’re not gonna have as much success as if you can dig that splinter around and have a little bit more healthy approach to your team.

Speaker 2 (43:08):

Yeah. So it starts with everybody feeling that they are safe, right?

Speaker 3 (43:15):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (43:16):

So let’s say I do the assessment and we don’t do so great.

Speaker 3 (43:20):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:21):

Now what,

Speaker 3 (43:22):

So oftentimes there are things in people’s mind when they answer that question. So, um, how are we an open conversation? And their brain goes, well, terrible, because just last week I was trying to tell you about the meeting culture and how everybody has to be on every meeting and I don’t have time to do my work. And I, I tried to communicate this and I was shut down. We don’t, or I, I thought about communicating. I realized what a job killer that would be for me. So like I didn’t, I didn’t tell you the next step, you know, you benchmark it, you go, oh, we got some growth to do. Did anybody think of anything while they were doing this that they think maybe would be a symptom or something to discuss? So that’s like in the moment of the assessment, right? Like mm-hmm <affirmative>, we just talked about where we’re at and you guys, you felt safe enough to let me know that it wasn’t great.

Speaker 3 (44:03):

Anybody wanna share? This is another place to do that with somebody who is not the boss. Because if they feel comfortable sharing, you get better answers anyway. Assuming that is like a moment in time and you know you have growth and you you heard a few things, the next step is to look at places, um, where you might have gaps in your team norms. Um, this specifically around communication, collaboration, and decision making. These are the three pillars that people typically feel like they don’t have psychological on. Am I communicated with appropriately enough? Do I know what I need to know to do my job? Is information being hoarded as power? Um, when we talk about collaboration, uh, am I being brought in at the right times where only, you know, only I could help solve this problem? Or is there a culture swinging too far in one direction?

Speaker 3 (44:49):

Like where everybody has to weigh on, on everything regardless of their experience and background? Or where like one person, because of where they sit gets to make all the decisions, right? Like where do we fit on on successful collaboration and decision making kind of being the same way? Like does all the power sit in one hand or do we just never make decisions? Cuz it’s, everything’s like death by committee and like nothing really changes around here, ever. Right? Right, right. And so, um, I like to fix culture through specific problems, specific projects, right? Like, I like to think about getting better at change through this project management system shift, right? As opposed to like an HR luncheon that we do quarterly, right? And think about culture. Um, so I think when you think about psychological safety, thinking about the areas of communication and collaboration and decision making and asking, are there small improvements I could do, I’ve heard grumbles, I, I’ve, you know, this is inconvenient, this is time consuming, this is not helpful.

Speaker 3 (45:42):

How can we improve our systems and our processes and our workflows based on what people have told us in order to earn that sense that they spoke, we listened, something happened and their lives are better. That’s really where you start to get improvements in the psychological safety. And if you have, you know, up on the wall, a psychological safety poster that says we value open conversation and attitude towards risk and failure, then, you know, you can start, you can point at it and say like, this is a moment for you guys to speak up. What do you really think about X? And then receiving that, even if they’re giving you something that maybe you don’t feel is correct, you receive it still and validate it and say like, I see how you could feel that way. Let me go off and think about an appropriate response instead of like, no, you’re wrong. That’s not how this works. And please go back to the drawing board. Um, so I think it’s, it’s a ongoing process. It’s not a hard one and it’s, it can be easily interwoven into interactions you’re already having. Yeah. Your one-on-ones, your team meetings, whatever. You can just reframe the goal of some of those meetings, um, and, and get some of the benefits of those, uh, water cooler Taco Tuesdays. Right?

Speaker 2 (46:49):

Yeah. Well, I I just think about if, if you don’t have that, especially if you erroneously think you have it and then changes don’t go well, I mean, you would be constantly banging against that brick wall. And I do do think as leaders, we don’t know what we don’t know. So many years ago, um, I thought I was, I thought, you know, open door and I’m pretty laid back and everything’s great and I, some of my employees have been with me for 20 years, and so I thought everything was great. And, uh, I had one employee who was always tasked with coming to say things to me that other people didn’t wanna say, right? So, and so she came to me, this was, gosh, 15 years ago, probably, maybe even 20, she came to me and she said, um, Hey, uh, the gang has asked me to, to chat with you about something.

Speaker 2 (47:41):

So I was like, all right. And uh, she said, I don’t think you realize it, but when we start to talk about something that makes you unhappy, your face says, stop talking. Like, they’re like, you look mad when, and I was like, you’re kidding? And she was like, no. Like you get an expression on your face and we’re like, oh, we don’t want the, we don’t want the look. And I was like, I, I mean I had no idea that I was projecting that, but obviously I was. So, uh, I pulled everybody together and I said, Karen, that was her name. I said, Karen told me this about my face. I’m really sorry. I have an idea of how we could make this better. I think you need, I said, I think it’s that I’m caught off guard that we’re about to have this bad conversation.

Speaker 2 (48:25):

So I think you need to warn me that I need to put on my poker face that if I can just change my expression to something neutral that maybe that’ll be easier for you to tell me whatever it is, I want to hear what you have to say. And I don’t mean to be the mean dad face that apparently I have. And so for many, many years, I mean, that was just our, that’s just been our practice is they’ll say, Hey, I need you to put on your poker face before we talk. And it just is enough of a warning for me. But I had, I had no idea that I was shutting down conversation. I thought I was this great open door gregarious Italian guy that anybody can tell anything to. And I was shutting down things that, you know, thank goodness they shared it with me. But I think sometimes we just don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it’s that. Yeah, I don’t think that for a lot of times for leaders. I don’t think they’re doing anything on purpose, but absolutely. We’re unaware. Right.

Speaker 3 (49:19):

Unintentional, uh, not malicious blind spots. We all have blind spots. Yeah. And that’s the beauty of psychological safety. If there’s open conversation, which is what you and Karen had, and Karen and her team had. Yeah. They didn’t all have it with you. Right. Like, so you can see that it’s not about like the, the thing people often say, oh, psychological safety is like trust. It’s like, well, I trust you and you trust Joe, but when you, me and Joe are on a team, there’s a different dynamic. It becomes about mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like group trust and that’s the, the concept of psychological safety. But you said a really important thing that when you’re talking about put on your poker face, you said, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to do it. So you sort of declared your intentions, but you also said, I really do wanna hear it.

Speaker 3 (49:57):

Yeah. So let’s work on a solution. I think sometimes that third piece isn’t there. I really wanna hear it. I think sometimes there is, and you know, just like our workforce is tired, leadership’s tired too. Sure. And that resistance and having to deal with resistance and deal with people’s feelings and, and sort of walk them through, coach them through this is work. And I think we have a lot of leaders that are tired and don’t wanna do that work. And I think it’s important to sort of like slow down, get enough buffer and break in your life that you can really think about your role as a leader and the leader you’re trying to be. Because I think most leaders when they’re not exhausted will say like, absolutely, I wanna hear the feedback. Absolutely. We wanna be a learning organization, but if you’re tired, you are probably sending some signals that not right now, can we do this later? Like, I, I don’t have the energy, or I’m gonna shut this down in some capacity. Right, right. Um, that’s not gonna help you in the long run.

Speaker 2 (50:55):

Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s happening every day. And, you know, to the, to the crux of our conversation, we are also in a time of unprecedented change and we have to be able to lead our organization and our clients to and through the change. And if we aren’t ready as a team to do that, we get stuck and we get stagnant. And, you know, agencies can’t afford to be stagnant.

Speaker 3 (51:21):

Yeah. I will add one last thing I mentioned at the top of the call, uh, the idea of change tokens and prioritizing change. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think not only are we reliving through unprecedented change that’s being foisted on us that we have to deal with. Right. There’s also a lot of shiny objects right now. Yeah. And shiny objects are great and we have to keep up with the times, but I think it’s really important in this moment to not bring a book home that you read on the airplane and, and buy it for all your staff unless it ladders up to a strategy initiative that you decided before you read the book. I think it’s really important that leaders have a strategic plan for the year that gets refreshed quarterly, and that we work towards. And so when I say, Hey, I read this book, it’s so critical.

Speaker 3 (52:05):

It’s about our, you know, our Q2 goal we have of achieving x. It has some great insights, chapter two especially ladders up to what we’re trying to do that we talked about last month is entirely different from coming in and like sweeping everything off the desk and being like, we’re doing it this way now. Right. Right. For right. In a lot of cases, like not a great reason other than you’re inspired and that inspiration is great. You need to take it to your other leaders. You need to take it to your peer group, your mastermind. You need to go figure out how that book fits in your strategic plan and then give very specific instructions to folks who are tasked with executing your strategic plan about why this piece is gonna be laddered up into, into what we’re trying to do. And I think that’s another thing that leaders have, um, not made enough time for pausing and doing the strategic planning Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:51):

And figuring out where they’re trying to go so that when shiny object pops up, they can say, great idea. Not part of this initiative. This year we, we have, our plates are full with things that we consider more important, or maybe it is, we’re gonna slot it into spot number two, but that means number five falls off and that’s gonna have to get postponed this year because we’ve decided shiny object belongs on the list. And I think if you can do that with transparency, then your team understands the priority. They understand why this change matters and why, how it fits in something bigger. And that’s, I think, often an important missing link for people’s willingness to get on board.

Speaker 2 (53:30):

Yeah. Good stuff. Really great stuff. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for, thank you for talking us through this. It’s such a, it’s such a critical topic in this moment and probably it always a critical topic in agency life, but it just feels like right now both the change part and the fatigue part are front and center and kind of banging against each other. And so, um, I think, I think we gave everybody some really great strategies and tactics to think about what changes matter enough to make them, and then how to, how to set yourself up for success to, to drive them through either your own organization or help clients drive them through theirs. So this has been great. Thank you.

Speaker 3 (54:10):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (54:12):

So folks wanna learn more about the book, uh, they wanna learn more about your services. What’s the best way for people to track you down, follow you on social, learn all the things, keep learning from you? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (54:24):

Absolutely. Uh, we’re at change fatigue.com for the book and resources. And then we’re also really active on LinkedIn under the same title and obviously under my name would love to have, um, conversations there, questions. We also do a monthly free master, uh, masterclass where we’re just letting you come and say like, my agency’s going through this and I’m stuck. And we’ll just like fire off some off the cuff ideas for you. So hopefully that can be a helpful resource as well.

Speaker 2 (54:49):

Yeah, that sounds awesome. Thank you again so much. This has been, this has been fantastic. I’m, I’m, I’m sure we will, I’m sure we will continue to talk and I will continue to have many questions for you. So I appreciate your time, <laugh>.

Speaker 3 (55:01):

Fantastic. It’s been a pleasure. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 (55:04):

Okay. All right, guys, this wraps up another episode. So Jenny gave you a lot of resources and hopefully a lot of food for thought. I, I, I know you want to be a great leader and I know you wanna lead your team through change, and I know you want to create a place where people feel part of a team, like they too wanna help you grow and change. And I think you got a lot of sort of nuggets of information to think about to sort of self-assess, to talk to with your leadership team, to talk to, with, uh, everybody in the organization. Not only for how you can bring about change inside your shop, but how do we help clients face change? I think, you know, as, as the work we do gets marginalized in so many places, one of the places where we still add incredible value and clients are willing to pay for it is when we walk alongside them at a strategic level and help them have impact, real impact on their organization and what they’re trying to do for clients and employees and their customers and their bottom line.

Speaker 2 (56:04):

And so I think a lot of this conversation today can be part of your service offering, can be part of how you handle discovery, how you learn more about the clients before you implement something that, again, as Jenny said, maybe the folks at the top have bought into, but the rank and file don’t even know anything about and they’re gonna be tasked with it. So, uh, lots of fodder for thought here and I think some really great tools that you can bring into the organization and the conversations you have with clients. So this is not an episode to just listen to passively. This is really an episode that I’m hoping you sort of internalize and think about and talk about with other folks inside your organization. So you really have a good sense of how ready are you to tackle the changes that we are all facing inside and outside of our organization.

Speaker 2 (56:52):

So lots of great stuff here. So I I’m super excited to bring this to you and, uh, I’m super excited to hear from you what you do with it. All right, uh, quick shout out and thank you to our friends at White Label iq. As you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They come alongside agencies and for many of them, they’re the outsourced either p pc, web dev or design team. They are born out of an agency, as you know, an a AMI agency. I’ve known these folks for 20 years. So they understand how to work with agencies, how to price so that it’s profitable for you to work with them and how to take the pressure and relief off of you when you just can’t get it done internally. So they’re great folks. Head over to white label iq.com, uh slash ammi and you can read more about them.

Speaker 2 (57:38):

As you know, I’m here every week with another guest trying to help you think about your organization differently. I am grateful that you keep showing up. It means that I have something to do and I get to talk to great people and smart people like Jenny. So thank you for listening. Uh, you know how to reach me if you want to get ahold of me. Don’t forget the Facebook group. Uh, they build a better agency podcast Facebook group. There’s 12 or 1500 of you guys in there talking every day about right now we’re having conversations around separating salaries and reviews and we’re talking about how to, uh, assess project management systems, ironically, based on the conversation. So lots of great agency owner conversations that you are welcome to jump on board with. We’d love to have you there, and I will see you next week. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves and we’ll talk soon.

Speaker 1 (58:28):

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build to Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.