Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, Three Essentials of Successful Organizational Transformation Journey, Making Sure Change Goes Right. And I would now like to introduce our presenter today, Ron Carucci, Managing Partner at Naveland. Okay. Well, hello, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today. It's great to have you here. And thanks for coming to join what is obviously a robust and difficult topic. So it's a pleasure to be with you. My name is Ron Carucci, and I have spent the last 30 some odd years of my career working in the business of transformational change for organizations of all kinds in small startups, mid-cap companies, and large global powerhouses. And I've seen up close and personally the beautiful things and the terrible things that can go wrong during transformational change. So it's going to be a fun for me to spend time with you today sharing some of what I've learned over those years. I'm going to ask you, as we journey through our conversation, to be thinking about, or if you are in the middle of some type of complicated big change, or if you're about to start one, or you've just recently had one not go so well. Keep that story in your mind as we talk. Keep the faces of leaders in mind. Keep the things that didn't go well. Keep the things where you struggled personally in mind so that they serve as a backdrop to the content you can be applying what we talk about as we go. So as you heard from Lucy, the goal today is to talk about the essential parts of transformational change and how to make sure change goes right, which often people fail to realize happens on the very front end of change. So many of the seeds of failure of change are sown way before the change effort even begins. Most people associate failed change with the implementation part of it. We had a great idea, but something went wrong later in the process. But the reality is that change is often conceived poorly from the very beginning and is set up to fail before it even starts. Here are some of the reasons for that. In my experience, we've heard plenty of statistics around the fact that somewhere between 70-75% of all major change efforts go fail and when they're transformational efforts, sometimes those can't even be higher than that. So from the very beginning, if there's not a clear sense of vision or reason behind the change, there's not a real case for change. It's some leader's whim or it's some pet project. Or there's a scope of change mismatch to how you approach change. It's a much major bigger change, but the efforts you're applying are much smaller. There's not the right level of commitment. So we have a fairly significant set of resources allocated to change, but leaders aren't as committed as they need to be. One of the most common ones is fragmentation. So we're launching many, many change efforts all at the same time that are uncoordinated. Poor implementation planning, we lose energy. So these are some of the most common reasons. I'm not going to read all of the slides to you, but you'll have a chance to have them in the recording afterwards, but you get the sense that there's a lot of things that can go wrong with change, which means that making it go well takes a lot more work than most of us think it does. In our experience, you can look at transformation from three different lenses. Transformation within how we lead ourselves. So the ideas, the thoughts, the biases, the formative patterns that shape how leaders think and coordinate with each other. There's change between the relationship between leaders and their functions, the relationships of the scenes of their relation, and then transformation among the systemic levers of change. In our experience, the most challenging part of transformational change is that you actually have to do all three of them well. So be thinking about the changes you've been through and the ones that contrast the ones that didn't go well from the ones that did. And see if you can't detect or diagnose where it was in one of these three areas. My guess is that it was at least one of them where you either didn't have sufficient work done or have any work done. I've seen organizations construct brilliant transformation journeys with having done two of these exceptionally well, but ignore the third, and that will still make transformation fail. It's one of the unfortunate risks that comes with trying to create large-scale change, that it requires a lot of work to do all of the well. So we're going to talk, so our goal today is to talk through each of these three separately, and then we'll have a chat at the end about your questions. So each of these has a set of questions that go with it. So leading between, leading within personal transformation, do we know what our triggers are? Do we, do we just understand what biases and perceptions shape their actions? Do they know what moral compass or values compass they're navigating with? Do they know what their own strengths and weaknesses are that they bring to change? Transformation between, do people understand how relationship happens? Is there a way for conflict to be resolved? Does the organization value relationships and authenticity? Is it a highly fragmented or silent organization where people and adjacent functions can't coordinate well? Systemically, do we understand how the organization fits together? Is the strategy aligned to how the organization is built? Is it overly political or competitive? Are there cultural forces that are in place to undermine transformation? So all three of these together require thoughtful, well-constructed change in order for transformation to actually stick. Let's look at each one separately. Transformation within. So leaders in their operative narratives have a set of biases and tapes that inform how they act. You know, we all have that made the expression, gosh, he really pushes my buttons. These are often messages or templates that navigate the world at a very subconscious level. We fear, leaders fear obsolescence and a loss of control. They sense that they may be irrelevant during the change. And so in order for us to create transformation by sticks, we have to understand what are the current norms that are driving leaders' behaviors? We call this the operative narrative. The things that underpin why we see the world the way we do. They're built in very formative experiences. We all have origin stories. And if we don't know our origin stories, they're going to define our behaviors in ways we may not want. So we work hard to get at the roots of leaders' origin stories and their operative narratives. We make them identify what are the buttons that get pushed? What are the triggers that make them behave in ways they don't want? We've all heard leaders say, why do I keep doing that? Well, our answer is, well, you should wonder because there's a reason for it. We work with one executive who is an incredibly gifted leader leading a massive transformation of one of the most iconic brands in the United States. But he had these moments in executive team meetings where he would get triggered and get very angry. And sometimes they even get up and storm out of the room and confuse his team. And in some deeper work with him, we detected the fact that when people on his team would treat each other in ways he didn't respect, or in ways that belied his own values, when they would want up each other, when they would call each other out on behaviors that they weren't willing to change, he had his buttons pushed.  And he couldn't stand on his team behaved in ways that belied the values they expressed. It took a long time for us to dig that up. But it played a major role in helping him not be credible during certain moments of change. So by identifying that narrative and rescripting it to something else to understand how to address his concerns, he was able to change. So part of our job as transformational leaders is to identify what are the things that push people's buttons? What are the events, the past stories, the transference moments where we're transferring past events onto current events? And the kinds of stressors that push us to our worst behavior, to the worst version of ourselves. Because these narratives, they fight for their survival and they're very difficult to change. And during massive transformational change, if you're asking leaders to behave a certain way that belies the origins of how they're conditioned to behave, it's going to put a lot of stress on them. And eventually, they will regress back to what they know. So the way you rescript operative narratives is to really get clear on the formative events that shape behavior. That could be somebody's impatience, somebody's indecisiveness, somebody's competitiveness, somebody's fear of their own voice, somebody's inability to be assertive. It could be their inability to collaborate their own sense of individuality or their proclivity to hide behind others and not be set apart. Whatever the tape is, whatever the proclivity is, if it's going to conflict with the change you're making, you have to help leaders identify it and then script what you want the desired narrative to be. So what are the success factors of change within? That you have a culture of psychological safety that people can admit and be vulnerable about their own shortcomings or places where they struggle. There has to be ways for leaders to get feedback. There has to be ways for people to hear from each other directly how they're experienced so that they can actually act upon their behavior. It has to be an environment where asking for help is okay. People can't have to hide their shortfalls or have to be afraid that asking for help will be seen as weakness. And most importantly, you have to be able to be honest about past change failures. Given the rate of change failure in the world, it's highly likely that every organization has some pile of past failed changes behind them. And if we're not honest about why those things failed or even that they failed, it's more likely that we're going to repeat those failures. So examining what were the conditions under which past change efforts didn't go well helps us within ourselves understand how we contribute to future success. So that's transformation within. Let's talk about transformation between. So think about the times in your organization where you've seen functions rival, the classics, sales and marketing, R&D and operations, finance and supply chain, HR and a lot of people. There are very predictable places in organizations where conflict happens, where you've seen two leaders perhaps rivaling for the same job, conflicted. Places where the organization fragments, where centrifugal force pulls it apart, our places are killers of transformation. So how do we impose centrifugal force? Or organizations by their nature as they grow and scale pull apart, they fragment, the silos are a more natural conditioning part of how we grow. So in order to have cohesion, in order to impose centrifugal force, we have to understand how to stitch the seams, how to create connectivity. Leaders have to understand how they attach, how they build authentic relationships, how they create trust. Because otherwise, led to their own devices, seams will naturally cause divisional loyalties at the expensive enterprise loyalty. In one transformational project we worked on, it was a major innovation project. The leader was tasked with launching 40% of the new revenue for the following year to come from new product launches. Well, that was unprecedented for this company. They had never been that successful launching new products. And so he had to bring together the seams of R&D, and this is a food company, R&D, the marketing and consumer insights folks, and the operations folks where products were manufactured to understand how to create an innovation community. Well, historically, some of the product failures were the result of the fact that this was a very fear-based competitive culture. So the consumer insights folks were always afraid to share the honest results of their basis tests that showed that the consumers did not like the products. The marketing and branding people had never been able to create content messaging that positioned products well in the competitive set of this company. The R&D folks were at war with the consumer insights folks trying to detect what did the consumers actually want so they couldn't create products that actually would commercialize well. And the operations folks, their manufacturing footprint of this company have been outdated for a very long time. So being able to create small batch productions of new products to test them quickly was impossible for them. So when this leader of innovation realized that with all these war on factions, how were they ever going to get to that place where they could actually launch products that nobody believed was possible to get 40% of revenue in the next year from new launches. But he locked these three sets of people in a room for days to help them work out all the disconnections that there seems. And over time post that major event, we had many systemic issues we had to address. Competing metrics, you had things that marketing was rewarded for, I measured on, I conflicted with the things that R&D was rewarded for. So it wasn't just that they didn't get a long well, they were designed not to get a long well. We had to recreate the organization in a way that allowed it to coalesce very differently than it had in the past. And the following two years, they were in fact able to launch a number of new products that got them to at least 28% of new revenues coming from new products. But it took a lot of work to stitch those seams. Along the way, there were many operative narratives, many deeper from our last section, where leaders had biases about one another, about reasons they didn't trust each other. We had to dig those up as well. So transformation between, you have to have healthy relational attachment. People have to team well. You have to onboard people from outside the organization well. Learning has to be valued. You have to know who your stakeholders are.  Open descent and healthy conflict has to be valued. We can't be pushing conflict underground. We can't be colluding. We can't be transmitting faulty information to make decisions. We have to be open. Diversity and inclusion efforts have to be more than cosmetic. We can't just look for the clip art picture of a diverse workforce, but we don't really value diverse thinking. And community and belonging have to be cultivated. We have to have a sense that my contribution matters. So that's a successful transformation between. So transformation within, what are the operative narratives that shape our behavior? Transformation between, how do we stitch the seams and create a sense of trust and relationship between leaders and among functions? Lastly, let's look at transformation among the systemic nature of organizations. First, we have to look at understanding a model of organizational change. So this is a very common systems model. It's the Nader-Turchman congruence model. You've probably seen your own version of a systems model, but it's an active model of how organizations actually work. So here you have a strategy. That's our intent. This is our identity. This is who we want to be. I can't tell you how many times I walk into our organization and I ask them, well, tell me about your strategies. And I get all the counterfeits. I get a mission statement. I get the value statement. I get a product quota. I get the value, the cultural values. I get the next year's AOP goals or our product launch goals, but I don't get a sense for how are you different? Why would somebody choose you over somebody else? What is the way you're designed to win and what will give you that right to win? The strategic identity of an organization is often very confused. You can go around to your senior team of your organization and ask them what's our strategy and you can get as many different answers as there are people in the room. Well, from the very outset, then, if your identity is fragmented, your organization is not going to be transformable. But that strategic intent is put through a machine and out there beside comes the results, our enterprise results, our team results, and our individual results. That machine in the middle is called an organization. And that organization has hardware and software. The hardware, this middle vertical here, where you see work and formal organization. Formal organization isn't just the structure. It's governance. It's roles and accountability. It's information systems. It's processes. The work are the clear activities that set the organization apart, the truly evaluated activities that make you competitive. And the software, the culture, the norms, the beliefs, not just the values on the wall, on the poster and the lobby, but the real things that shape behavior. And people, their skills, their preferences, their competencies, their aspirations. And keeping it all glued together is leadership. Most important part of this picture are the arrows, the things that keep the hardware and software glued together. That's what creates alignment and that's where things tend to break down. So you have to examine your transformational change looking at all these things. But too often, people set out trying to pursue major change by pulling one of these levers. So in the formal organization, they'll do the reorg. They'll just rearrange the org chart. In work, they'll add some technology to make things more efficient. People, they'll run everybody through training of some kind. Or culture will change the values. The problem is systems fight for their survival. So if you only pull one of these levers, the rest of it's going to, you know, regress back to what it knows. So when you're constructing systemic change, change among, you have to look at all these pieces in concert with each other in order to make sure change actually sticks. Another model of change is looking at what we call the three systems of how work gets done. Your operating system is your day-to-day work. It's the people at the front lines who are executing and processing your raw materials into products you sell. Those are often associated with front-line employees. There's a close correlation to hierarchy here, but not exclusively. The coordinating system is the people in the middle. They're the ones translating strategy into daily actions. And then the strategic system is the top of the organization that actually is looking at the future, is monitoring competitive trends, is keeping their eye on the outside of the organization. Too often in organizations, you have people playing too low. So you have people in the blue system playing in the green, people in the green playing in the yellow. And so you get what we call compression.  You know, when you hear people saying, wow, we're so micromanaged that we're not trusted or we're not empowered, that's a good indication that these systems are not aligned. So again, if you're creating change among, you have to make sure that all three of these systems, which each play a role in prosecuting your organization's work, are actually working the way they're intended. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to get changed to stick. So what are the success factors of change among? Integrated and coordinated. That means that first model, the hardware and the software all have efforts that are coordinated with each other. Reward systems. So you have to make sure that the way you're rewarding performance is consistent with what you want to change. You can't be trying to get more collaboration if your reward system only rewards individual behavior. You can't be trying to get more transparency when your information systems don't allow people access to information they need to make decisions. You can't say you're trying to create a more empowered environment if there are levels of, you know, endless levels of approval to get things done. You have to make sure what you're rewarding matches what you say you want. Governance is transparent. So you have to make sure that the right leaders are gathering around the right tables to make the decisions that they're empowered to make and that they have the resources to do it. You can't have all decision pathways floating to the top. You have to make sure that decision rights are distributed to the closest possible places to actually get decisions made. And people have to know who gets to make what decisions. You have to make sure people are modeling. So if you have a set of values in your organization, you have to make sure people are held accountable for modeling those values. And when they're not, they have to be held accountable to change their behavior. And you have to make sure that your strategy is you are being who you say you are, that you understand the basis of what you, on what you compete and when the way you differentiate from competitors and everybody in the organization has to have a clear line of sight on how their work aligns with that, that, that strategy. You know, if you haven't read some of the stories, you know, Microsoft is undergoing a major cultural transformation right now. When I met with Kathleen Hogan, she's the chief people officer there a few weeks ago to interview her about all the different levers they're using to transform the organization. And, you know, she described all the people practices that they've overhauled to reward very different behavior, all of the learning practices, all of the, the, the strategy processes by which, by which strategy gets to form and executed, all the communication practices and all the engagement practices, they're pulling so many levers, but they're doing it in a very coordinated way, which is why they're seeing the results they're seeing. So change within the operative narratives that shape our behavior and shape how we see the world. Change between the seams of the organization, how we connect leaders in relationship and how we connect functions and regions and divisions into relationship and change among how we systematically see the organization, how we understand how the pieces fit together and how we create a cohesive approach to change by making sure that the system is built to deliver the change we want. Those are the three levers. And again, as I said at the outset of this, you actually have to be good at all three of them. When you construct your change, look at each of those three categories and ask yourself, do we have work that's coordinated under all three of those categories intended to get at the change in each of those domains? Because if you only do two of them well, your transformation will still fail. So change within, change between, change among. That's the content I have. I'm looking at our time. So we have about half an hour in. Let me just close with this slide and then I'm going to open up to your questions because I love for you to bring your stories of change, either successful stories or stories where you're struggling and see if we can't apply some of the content to the changes you're leading. The good news is transformation can be successful. Despite the high failure rates, they don't have to fail. They just require a lot more work than most of us understand. And you have to see these journeys in years. So often I hear very well intended but naive executives say things like in the next 90 days, we're going to, or they try and put out these false mile markers or false compass headings that convey that change is going to happen much quicker than it is really possible. The problem there is you create cynicism because nobody believes it's really possible. So now nobody takes your message of change seriously. You have to look at these journeys measured in years. They require work in all three domains, within, between, and among. Be thinking about the one that you're least inclined toward or your organization might be least inclined toward. Maybe it's within. Maybe you don't like to get touchy-feely or personal. Or maybe you're very, very within oriented, but you're not very among oriented. Maybe you're not between oriented. Maybe you don't care about cohesion and teaming or collaboration. It's highly likely that your organization is predisposed. You do one or two of these very well, but you're also probably predisposed to ignore one or avoid one. That's the one where you're probably most vulnerable to failing. If you're leading the transformational journey, prepare yourself physically, emotionally, relationally, these are grueling journeys that require far more of leaders than most leaders ever expect. So make sure you have a personal set of colleagues around you to advise you, to encourage you, to kick you in the butt when you fall short, to keep you in the game. Make sure that you're learning. By default, if you've never led one of these before, or even if you have, the one you're leading is not entirely like ones in the past, there's some part of this that you will have to learn and change for in order to lead it well. If you only lead according to your past successes, that's as far as you'll get in this transformation and it probably will fall short of the aspirations you have. And lastly, keep the vision of a transformed state in mind at all times. You've got to keep your eye on the prize. When it gets hard, when the organization resists, when the cynics throw darts at you, when people tell you it's not going to work, when people tell you that they politically put pressure on you to not change, you've got to be prepared for that and you've got to keep your eye on the prize. Because if the pain of change is not greater than the pain of the way things are, you'll look at the world you came from and think, well, maybe it wasn't so bad. And that's one of the first signs that your change is going to go into a slow death. So remember that when you set out on these journeys, you've got to stay at the course. And at all costs. Now, you should ignore signs of failure. Don't be single-mindedly ignoring the fact that there may be things you have to course correct for. These are not straight-line journeys. They're quite traversing of lots of curves. So be ready for those. But stay at the course and keep the vision of where you want to be in front of you at all times. So that's the content I wanted to share with you. I'm going to open it up to questions from you now to see where you're faced with challenges of change or what questions I can from the content I can review for you or anything you want to offer. So I'll open it to you now. Jacob wants to know, what role does leadership continue to play in this? Does it depend on individual leaders or can an organization sustain change irrespective of individual leaders? That's a fabulous question, Jacob. And I would tell you that what obviously depends on who the leader is. Certainly, if it's an enterprise transformation, if your CEO is not credible or not a role modeling, it's going to be very difficult. So I think leadership plays our role. It plays more of a role in causing failure than causing success. Because at the end of the day, it's leaders who are going to prioritize the initiatives that are the change between and change among work. So leaders have to make sure they're picking right because if you looked at the position you want to change, you could probably identify hundreds of places for a change between within and among to happen. You have to prioritize right once because you can't impose more change on the organization that can actually absorb. So it does require leadership to monitor the absorption rate. The bigger challenge, I think, for leadership though is when there be own behavior contradicts the change and they don't take responsibility for that, it quickly creates cynicism and undermines the long-term success. So I do think that the role of leadership is important, but it doesn't require perfect leaders. I think as long as leaders can own the fact that they're imperfect and they have things to learn as well, the change can go fine. The flip side of that, Jacob, is that when you only focus on leadership, so change within, at the expense of between and among, that won't work either. So if you overemphasize or overindex on leadership at the expense of systemic issues, you're also going to fail. And we have another one. Thank you for your presentation. Who should play the role of managing transformation? So it's an interesting question. There's a lot of debate these days about that. I think some of it depends on what the transformation is designed to do. So if it's cultural, maybe it's your CEO and your CHRO in tandem. I've seen a lot of companies creating what I've seen called the Chief Transformation Officer as somebody who in the C-suite designed to guide this. It's a great role if you have a large global company. If you're a mid-cap company or you're only three, four, five thousand employees, you certainly don't need that. But I often find that that's not to have it be one person. I often find that when you pair executives together with a transformation team, especially if you're doing major design work that's designing the whole enterprise, a design team that has multiple levels of diverse folks on it, maybe seven or eight folks, paired by a pair of executives who are forced to own it together, that I've seen get the best results. I think when you have one person who's the face of a transformation, it's a high risk. Job, it can be done. But the risk, of course, is that if that person is incredible, doesn't inspire people, isn't able to rally a cross-section of the organization, you have the organization going to this uneven level of change, where some parts are changing faster than others. And that's a risk. So I think when you have a pair of leaders whose influence spans the whole enterprise, it goes better. All right. Ellen is from Northern Germany. She does a lot of transformation processes, mostly in the field of company succession of small and medium-sized companies. I found out that it is always a good idea not only to ask about the past, the present, and the future state. I work sometimes with the customer on the natural impacts of the change after the desired change has successfully taken place. What do you think of that? I think it's critical. It's a great point. Metrics, it's one of the things Microsoft is doing very well. They take daily pulse surveys. They have 140,000 employees. If you're not measuring, people think that we announce change, we unveil a change, we put the new technology in whatever, and then change is done. It's not. In the first year of change, I recommend quarterly. At least quarterly metrics have not monthly metrics. You have to know what will tell you the change is doing what you wanted to do, or if it's going into heart failure. Some set of quantifiable and qualitative metrics that are getting data on an ongoing basis, at least very regularly in the first year, and even at least quarterly in year two and three. Otherwise, you will look at the moment of change, the moment the change is in place as a success, and you'll be declaring premature victory. You've got to monitor on an ongoing basis, measuring what it is you said the change would do, and when it's not doing that, have a feedback that allows you to course correct. All right. Perfect. Jesse has a question. Our senior executives are not managing change well between departments, and departments are still very competitive. How can I trigger change? I've got an HBR article called How to Permanently Resolve Cross-Departmental Rivalries, and it's our scene process. You can look. Maybe that article might give you some sense for the tools we use when that happens, but depending on what role you're in, certainly, if you can get people to acknowledge your highly fragmented siloed organization, my guess is that I would find reward systems that reward very individual behavior. I would find governance processes that don't have any cross-functional alignment on them where people are forced to cross boundaries. I would build coalition. I would find a way to get a call, because somewhere in your organization, horizontal work is required, and it's probably impairing performance in some way, product quality, customer service, something is suffering because of your inability to coordinate horizontally and over vertical orientation. I would find a way to get a coalition of folks from across boundaries to bring them together to talk about, because somewhere, somebody doesn't like it, right? Even at Microsoft, in the days where they were hyper-competitive internally, people still didn't like it. So somewhere, somebody's in pain over the fact that there is a competitive culture where the rivalries between departments are somehow impeding somebody's ability to succeed. If you can find out where that is and get those people in a room to talk about that, that'll at least help you build some coalition around how to get people to sort of break down some of those barriers. Okay, perfect. I think you just covered this next question, but I'm going to ask just in case. Sandy wanted to know what recommendations do you have for change agents within an organization? So depending on what your role is, if you're in a support function, like strategy or finance or HR, where you're a practitioner of change, certainly make sure you understand how the business makes money and make sure that how it is, your role contributes to change. If you're a leader or an executive in a line or heading up a function, I think part of your job is to make sure you know the boundaries of the change you're leading. So often, either people underreach and they overly narrowly define the boundaries of change or they overreach and they politically upset people. So make sure that if you're leading change, the boundaries in the scope are clear. Leading transformation is skill set. If you come to our website, navelin.com slash transformation, we have a free ebook on leading transformation. And it's basically the ebook on the content of this presentation. So if you come and download that free ebook, navelin.com slash transformation, you can get a whole playbook on everything we talked about today. Fantastic. We have another one coming in. How can we manage leaders in transition, those whose contracts are coming to an end in the middle of change? Ouch. Long before the contract ends. So if you know there's going to be a handoff to the, I think Jacob's the only question about the role leaders play, a leadership transition doesn't have to undermine change. But the organization has to be really clear that if a leader is exiting and they want the transformation to go on or the change that they began, many organizations begin changes with one leader and finish it with another leader. That's perfectly fine, but there has to be a handoff period. So you want at least three or four months of time for the leader who's exiting, even if their exit is not known, to have some set of people around them, to whom they're passing the baton, to whom they're planning the continuity of change with so that when they leave, the continuity of change is not disrupted. If you wait until two weeks before the leader is going to go, you're going to have some disruption and continuity. So the planning for the handoff very, very early, months in advance is really important. Okay. Speaking of that, in a world where speed is crucial, why measure success of transformation in years, not months? So just for the sake of honesty, right? I'm not saying there aren't milestones you can hit. So there are certainly things you want to be looking for to have happened in the first six months, so the first nine months. And also obviously depends on how big your organization is. If your organization is 4,000 people or 5,000 people in a contained region, obviously you'll see change much quicker. But if you're 100,000 employees operating around the world, it's just going to take much longer. So what I'd say is when you talk about progress of change, talk about it for what it is. So often we try and over embellish what we've accomplished in 90 days or six months as being far more than it really is. And so we miss signal to the organization that we're further along than we really are. So my only point is simply understanding that change that really sticks where you really are truly a transformed organization is not going to happen within the first three or six or nine months, but certain things will happen. And it's perfectly okay to talk about those things and even celebrate those things when you see them as long as you position them as means to an end. These are signals. These are indicators that were on our way to what we said we wanted to go and celebrate them as that. They're not evidence that we're finished. So that's the only distinction I make. Okay. And given how long change can take and the short term tenure of senior leadership, doesn't this just encourage people to wait out the leadership team to avoid change? It absolutely does. Every organization, who especially if you had a lot of failed change has what I call a this too shall pass club. And those are the people who set them aside lines. They've seen it happen before. And they assume this is just one more, you know, silver bullet attempt at change and, you know, we'll wait out the next guy.  If if not, if if change becomes a volunteer program where my requirement to change is optional, rest assured people are not going to volunteer to change. The only people who like change are wet babies. But beyond that, most people don't want to sign up for this kind of journey. So a leader who's determined to see change through has to address directly those people who are sitting on the sidelines. And if there are not consequences for them, the entire organization sees it and assumes that this is a volunteer program and it's optional. All right. And what is the role of PMOs managing transformation? I would love to see PMOs become transformational changing and so often they're technical offices. And so their version of a change ready for a PMO is training or it's messaging. I would wish for PMOs to truly become much more transformational and systemic in their understanding of the human side of change, the relational part of change, the human behavior and behavioral science part of change, not just the technical and project management parts of change. I think so often those are separated. Right. So PMOs are managing the implementation of a new enterprise resource system or a new technology or a cloud based change, or they're managing the building of new plants to manufacture new products. And they're doing a phenomenal job of managing many complex parts, but they're not doing the behavioral and cultural and strategic aspects of change that we're talking about here. And I would so love for those worlds to marry in the future and become one integrated source of change. I think when that happens, PMOs will be not only be very powerful and really fun places to work, they'll be far less frustrating jobs and they'll have a lot more fun. All right. This is a good one. Should culture change be led by HR? We often have HR called people and culture. Having this structure seems back-footed rather than active. Is there a change management structure set up that dissolves once transformation is complete? So it's a two-part question there. Let me start with the first one. HR should absolutely not lead culture change. They can't. And with one of the questions I asked Katherine Hogan and Microsoft, and she would be the first to say as a CHRO there, there's a role for the CHRO to play in helping construct a cultural change. But if the entire executive team is not engaged, they built what they call a culture council, a culture cabinet that was made up of many vice presidents and directors to come and synthesize and evangelize the culture change there. Culture change has to be owned systemically by a lot of leaders. So HR can play a role, but if they're playing the role, it's probably not going to go well. Two second question about transition structures. Absolutely. There needs to be a transition structure in place scaffolding the change that cannot go on in perpetuity. So whether that's a year or two, or it absorbs into the PMO if there are ongoing work, but if there are aspects of change that have to find a home, they have to find a home. So if the change is standing up a new technology platform somewhere in IT or somewhere in operations or somewhere in supply chain, that new technology has to be absorbed. So somewhere into the existing roles or newly created roles, the work has to be absorbed. You can keep it in parallel to the organization forever. For a season, certainly, maybe that's a year or 18 months, but at some point that has to get disbanded and absorbed into the organization. All right. And what are your thoughts about building a new organization with new skills, culture and capabilities within the organization and then integrate some companies select this approach? It's tricky. If the transformation you're constructing is that radical of a departure from the world you have today, certainly it would seem easier to just go in parallel to the organization, build it out here and then migrate to it. The challenge, of course, is that everybody out in the existing organization sees it happening and feels left out. So now you have this old guard, new guard, often into that parallel structure, you're importing a lot of outside new talent who then come in and indict the organization with their diagnosis. Oh my gosh, people, how have you survived this long that you hear all that? So you create this we-they mentality. That's the risk of it. People assume that what that approach will do is make things go faster. It may, but the risk is if you don't start constructing the migration pattern of the old to the new from the very beginning, that's where it goes wrong. And where I've seen that process fail is when you go over here and construct this whole new world, the incubator, whatever it is, this special new world, and you have not started it from the very beginning thinking about how are these people over here going to get there. You sort of sail off on your own and then the gulf between the two worlds is too big. So in very rare occasions, I think that's an approach for change that should be reserved for very special and rare occasions where the current world is so broken and so regressed back to a time where it's, the leapfrog is too great, but you haven't got, you have an old business model, you have to keep going as a cash cow to fund the new world. But you have to accept the fact that once you launch off to build the new world out there over here, the difficulty in migrating the old world to it is, is significant and you're going to have to really make sure you're planning for it early. But it's an approach I would recommend only for very, very special occasions or very special circumstances under which there's no other way to do it. All right. Do you bring in competitors or unsatisfied clients into the process? That was a question. I think the more you can ground the transformation in the external world, it's critical. Competitors, customers, former customers, the voices of the marketplace have got to be the primary grounding of this transformation. It has to be a means to that end. If it's only a means to some internal end, it definitely will fail. So in the change within, who are my competitors? Who are the people I touch? The change between how we build the capabilities together to serve the marketplace and systemically, how are we changing our competitive positioning so that we continue to win long term? You have to ground this externally. The voices of the people you serve, the voices of your suppliers, the voices of those you compete with are vital voices. So on your upfront, you know, if you're beginning a transformational journey, you're probably going to start with some hopefully very robust diagnostic work. We call it an MRI. When we come into organizations, we do a very robust MRI of the organization. That diagnosis should absolutely include the voices of people outside your organization because they bring a very different perspective from people inside. All right. And what do you do with those who do not want to change or to accept the transformation in spite of the benefits identified for the major part of stakeholders? That was question. So as I said before, there have to be consequences. Certainly people resist change for many reasons. Sometimes mostly that they fear being obsolete. They fear change the exclusive. They fear that they don't have the capabilities to succeed in this new world that you're going to. So certainly, you know, if you have legacy talent or 10-year talent you want to preserve, you want to give them every chance to succeed in a new world, whether that's coaching or whether that's skill development or retooling that they might need, you know, certainly you have to help them migrate. But the reality is it's unlikely everybody can make the journey. There will always be casualties of transformational change for the people who are never going to be able to succeed or who are refusing to try and succeed. You can't keep them. You just can't keep them. If you keep them around, they serve as a symbol that we don't really mean change. And so when there are hard decisions to make, don't avoid them. It's not cruel. It's actually cruel to keep them in place when everybody knows they can't succeed. It's not unkind to help people transition to something else or to some other organization where they can be more successful. Okay. So how do you integrate differently and excuse me, how do you integrate different and diverse experiences of elderly and youngsters? Would you focus on this integration as a success factor? Absolutely. I wrote a book many years ago called Leadership Divided. It was about generational differences. It was who's actually research on the emerging millennial generation before we even call them millennials. And there's a blog post on our website called Better Together about the relationship between generations of change. They're actually, first of all, they're far less different than we think they are. But secondly, at the core, what we see, we almost view as conflict between generational differences is what I call the conflict between legacy and potential. So older workers, resisting younger workers, because they feel their own obsolescence and younger workers feeling older workers because they feel being muted. In fact, they're not getting their chance. But the reality is, outside the emerging professionals' future, there is no legacy for older workers. And outside the legacy, their potential is never going to be realized. So they need each other. But you have to build that bridge. It's not a natural coalescence of generations to come together. But when you create conditions under which they can work together, they actually enjoy collaborating very, very, very well. And they do it very well. And they really begin to realize quickly how much they have to offer each other. And the older workers have as much to learn from the younger workers as the younger workers have from the older workers. And when you create that mutual playing field, it's actually a beautiful thing. Great. If a person is not a leader, what is the best way to present her own idea of organizational change? Such a great question. So often, individual contributors feel marginalized. They feel like, you know, in the hierarchy of the organization, how do I get my voice heard? How do I get my idea heard? And so the first thing I recommend is that you really make sure your idea is vetted out well. That you have a clear sense for what the change is, that it's not coming from your own personal sense of preference or bias. And make your case. The second thing I would do is shop that idea. So before making any kind of formal presentation, I'd go test your idea. Find trusted colleagues in other departments or in your own stakeholder list who could most benefit from the change or who might be, who might share your frustration and the need for change and begin to build a sort of informal coalition that might get support for the change. And when you have enough, and then also with those folks who refine your idea, right, so those people will have perspectives and inputs and data that can help refine your thinking. And then once that's done, once you have a sense for, you have a real case for change here, find a leader that can help you champion it and begin to move it into the organization in a more formal way. Great. Do you see agile methodology and transformational change initiatives? Sure. I think agile is a great, you know, it's, if you look back in the origins of continuous improvement and re-engineering and all the early quality work in the 70s, we've evolved into a place where being more adaptive and being more adaptable is critical. I think the spirit of agile should be built into every transformation, meaning you can't make any, you can't have that many fixed assets. And so, you know, the lean agile technology, certainly for manufacturing organizations, for high tech organizations, where you have to ramp up processes quickly and then revise quickly, agile is a great set of tools. But it has to be seen for just that it's a set of tools. When we try and create, use agile as a way of life, where it becomes this almost cult-like following of everything we do, it gets a little bit overextended. I think the spirit of agile is that we all need to be adaptable. We all need to be able to flex quickly. We all have to have our minds changed. We all have to see the world through new lenses. I think that is really important for any transformation. Great. And if we take strong performers out of business to nominate to projects of long duration, we've had some issues reintegrating them back into business after the project. It makes it difficult to recruit champions. Do you have any best practices?  I love that question. So, first of all, I work out on the front end, right? So, if they're going to be, if they're going to be a, have a two-year journey leading a major transformation, make part of that transformation, building their new job, right? So, don't start with the assumption they're going to go back to their old role, or if that's really what they want, commit to them that they can, right? Commit to them that they can, they'll find a place back. Don't let your best talent set out to champion change, having to carry the anxiety of an unknown future, because it's just, you know, you won't get the best talent leading the change and you want that. So, either commit to making part of the transformation they're going to lead the creation of their future role, which may have to be discovered. I've seen that work very, very well. Whenever we do major or design projects, our design teams, inevitably, at least half of them watch themselves design themselves out of a job, because the design process usually takes away some of the roles in organization and creates new ones. So, we talk about it. We were very open about that in our design process, so that people can talk about their anxieties over watching their future go away, but they handle it very well. And often, the people on the design team process get the best jobs, because they're the ones that know how the new design is supposed to work. So, I would handle the decision about the future of your best champions on the front end of the process and not ask them to launch on into the anxiety of the unknown without that. Perfect. So, I think that does wrap up our Q&A session. We're about out of time. Ron, do you have any final closing remarks for our audience today? Yeah. So, first of all, thanks so much for your questions. They were fabulous. They were rich. I can tell you're all thoughtful leaders who have thought a lot about change. So, you know, regardless of the role you're in, you can have an impact regardless of where you sit in the organization's hierarchy or functionally or regionally. Just know that your voice is important. You have something to offer. Don't hold your voice back.  And to the spirit of the question about agile, change is a constant now. Used to be a change was something that was episodic.  But now, transformation is an ongoing way of life. So, we have to get better at it. We have to become more skilled at it. And so, if you're all in roles where you can help your organizations get better at change, then do it. Doesn't matter where you sit. Your voice and your ideas matter. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Ron. And thank you to everyone that attended our webinar today. On behalf of Brightline, thank you again. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. And, Ron, we can't thank you enough. Bye, y'all. And thanks so much for having me. And good luck to y'all.


The religions of the world have been screaming for a long time, that God is everywhere. When Einstein said E is equal to MC squared, that is not his living experience, that is his mathematical deduction. This question is not related to yoga. Okay, Sadhguru, there were questions that I have come with and one of those is, what was the reason of creation of this universe? Why are you asking me, I didn't do it? No, you first said it's not related to yoga. There's nothing which is not related to yoga because yoga means union.  Yoga means union, union means all inclusiveness. Everything has become one in your experience. Now this is not our idea because that is the way existence is. But it is all inclusive, there is nothing here which you can separate from the other. Today modern science is proving it to you beyond any doubt that the whole existence is just one energy. Yes? The religions of the world have been screaming for a long time, that God is everywhere. Whether you say God is everywhere or you say everything is one energy, are you talking about different realities or the same reality? God is everywhere, everything is one energy. Are we talking about the same thing? A scientist never experienced this, he only mathematically deduced it. When Einstein said E is equal to MC squared, that is not his living experience. That is his mathematical deduction. A religious person never experienced it, he just believes it because somebody that he believes in said so. Now yoga means you are a hard case, you are not willing to settle for deductions or belief systems, you want to know it. So if you sit here, if you can experience the whole existence as yourself, then you are in yoga. So there is no question not related to yoga, okay? It is very related. Now what you are asking is why creation, isn't it? When it comes to creation, you never ask why, you ask how? Because if you ask why creation, I can tell you one day you know God had nothing to do, he was playing marbles. One marble fell this way and became planet earth, another flew up and became sun. Shall I continue? This is a ridiculous story, you don't like it, but I can tell you a nice elaborate story which you would like to believe. Take a little more time, that's all.  If you believe, you have an interesting story going, a positive story. If you disbelieve my story, you have a negative story going, but both ways you are not any closer to reality than you are right now, isn't it? Yes or no? If you believe my story, does it get it close to you? If you disbelieve my story, does it get it close to you? No. You will just have stories. Maybe what I am telling you is a true story. Even if it is a true story, still it doesn't get you access to reality, isn't it? Maybe I am telling you a true story, but even if it is a true story, in your experience it is just a story, isn't it? Stories will entertain you. Stories will solace you. Stories will not liberate you. You must know this. So you must decide first of all, are you looking for solace or are you looking for a solution? If you are looking for solace, you just came to the wrong place because I am not a solace to anybody.  If you are not asked questions, I will raise those questions for you. This is not a place to say everything will be okay, everything will be okay, don't worry, everything will be all right. They've been saying this to you for a long time. That will help you to sleep well tonight. I am not interested whether you sleep well or not. I am interested that you come awake tomorrow morning. What's your interest? So people have been focusing on how to put you to sleep. So they told you stories. I won't tell you a story because if you ask why, I can only tell you a story, isn't it? Right now this question has come. If you are feeling right now ecstatic, would you ask why creation? You would be glad you created, isn't it? Right now the experience of life has become burdensome somehow. That is when you ask why all this creation? So first, let's change the experience of life. Then the right questions will come. Right now the question itself is coming from a wrong perspective because you are not asking this question with the right sense of depth in it. Very easily you are articulating this question.  You are asking what is the nature of my existence. But you are asking it too casually because you still do not know the pain of ignorance.   You are not being torn apart by the pain of ignorance. If such a thing was happening, then I would answer this in a different way. If you could not ask the question, if tears came to you, if you just thought about the question, then I will answer it in a completely different way, which is not verbal. But now you are so clearly articulating the question, you do not know the depth of the question that you are asking yet.


So I want to follow up on the conversation that we had last week about Donald Trump's decision to deploy federal agents to cities like Seattle and Portland. And in the case of Portland, there's been a lot of viral videos on the web that are just downright disturbing of federal agents who don't have any identification in unmarked vehicles, abducting people literally on top of that. They are doing violence. They're assaulting protesters. One of them shot a protester in the face at point blank with a tear gas canister. So I mean, what they're doing here is unspeakable and all of this action that's taking place is happening as the governor, as local officials, you know, the mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler are saying, we don't want you here. Get out now just to kind of give you a little bit of a glimpse of what's happening. Take a look at this video and pay close attention to what the agents say as they're detaining this individual and people around bystanders who are watching and filming object to what they're doing. That should send chills down the back of your neck just because you have these people in an unmarked vehicle abducting people. I mean, this is literally what we see in authoritarian regimes. But to make matters worse, in case you didn't hear, one of them said, if you follow us, you will get shot. So the people who are concerned that these strange men are abducting someone, putting them in a vehicle that's unmarked, could be anyone, could be a psychopath, but they're abducting someone and they're saying, follow us and you will get shot. This is taking place in the United States of America, threatening people, abducting people, doing violence. And when I say doing violence, they're doing violence. Take a look at this video of an old Navy vet. He's probably in his fifties or sixties. He's literally not doing anything and police officers assault him. Now he took that beating like a champ. He was pepper sprayed in the face, took it like a champ. He still turned around and flipped him the bird.  If you're out there protesting, exercising your first amendment, right? You shouldn't be assaulted by militarized federal agents. It's completely unacceptable. So it's disturbing and there are dozens of other viral videos you could find online of that same very thing happening. But the silver lining of all of this is that the response from the community has been nothing short of overwhelming. I mean, the words fed goons out of PDX was projected onto the Multnomah County Justice Center and even a small army of moms showed up to form a literal human shield around Black Lives Matter protesters to protect them from police brutality that some of these protesters are seeing from these federal agents. What we're seeing here, the streets on Portland, it looks like a war zone. And not too long ago in cities across the country when the George Floyd protests broke out, lots of America looked like a war zone. But the difference is that these were local police officers. People were demanding their local governments take action to stop police brutality. But now what we're seeing are these federal agents unaccountable to local authorities that Trump has dispatched to Portland and other cities and they're wreaking havoc. I mean, to say that this is a violation of states' rights is an understatement. But we don't hear much from small government conservatives who purport to care about states' rights.  Exactly. This is literally tyrannical. It's unconstitutional. If you are going to arrest someone, if you are in law enforcement, you have to read them their Miranda rights. They have to understand why they're being arrested, but they're just being abducted and taken to unknown locations. This is not something that democracies are supposed to allow. They're supposed to be institutional checks that prevent this from happening. Constitutional checks, civil rights and civil liberties that protect us from this. But the fact that Donald Trump is just flippantly violating this and these federal agents from DHS and ICE are complying, that is incredibly disturbing and terrifying and it should shake everyone to their cores. Look, think about if the shoe were on the other foot for a moment. Let's say Donald Trump lost the election and he said it was rigged and he said the results are illegitimate and people took to the streets in Alabama and they started rioting. What this allows is for the president to expand his or her authority and do what Trump is doing. So now if Joe Biden wanted to, he could deploy federal agents to Alabama. It would still be unconstitutional, but since Trump did it and set up this precedent, well now this is a possibility and you would guarantee that the conservatives would not like it if a Democrat did it. But because someone on their team is doing the tyranny, is resorting to authoritarian tactics, they're okay with that. I mean, if Obama did this, if Obama deployed troops to Texas, can you imagine the outcry from Progressives Fox News would never shut up about it?  So for a Democrat to do this, it would be beyond the pill to them. But because it's Donald Trump, that's okay because, you know, he's their guy and if the authoritarian isn't hurting them directly, then it doesn't really matter. To them, democracy is a one-way street. And really these abductions, these illegal detainees, these are just the tip of the iceberg because as journalists Ken Klippenstein uncovered, there are predator drones reportedly on standby, presumably to provide the feds with additional surveillance of protesters. Let me repeat that. Drones are on standby. The same drones that we use to blow up the Middle East and North Africa are on standby in America. So what we're seeing in the United States reflects what our military is doing abroad. So we took the war on terror and, you know, as unacceptable as that was, now we're doing it domestically at home. And the reason why Donald Trump thinks he has the authority to do this is because he signed an executive order that protects statues and anyone who chooses to engage in suspected vandalism in many cases, even if they're not doing anything wrong, well, they are deemed a national security threat. I mean, we already know Donald Trump wants to treat so-called Antifa protesters as terrorists because that's what he said via Twitter. Now we don't necessarily know legally what the implications of that will be, but it certainly tells us what his actions are, you know, what he's trying to how he's trying to justify rather these types of actions, you know, going into Oregon, even if the governor wants him out. Now in response to this, the state of Oregon is now suing the U.S. Marshall Service, ICE and DHS for illegally abducting citizens, which amounts to arrests without them being read their Miranda rights, which is obviously unacceptable. It's illegal. They're also suing for civil rights violations and may even press charges against the one federal agent who shot a protester in the face with tear gas. And additionally, senators from Oregon, such as Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, are taking action as well. Jeff Merkley tweeted, when I get back to DC next week, I will be introducing an amendment to the defense bill with Ron Wyden to stop the Trump administration from sending its paramilitary squads onto America's streets. We won't let these authoritarian tactics stand. And specifically, this legislation would force federal agents to identify themselves, curtail their crowd control abilities, notify local authorities of their presence, and also make violations of said rules illegal. And Representative AOC is releasing a House bill that requires federal agents also to identify themselves. But even though this would make a difference, it's not it's not good enough. Like these agents need to leave immediately. Nobody in Portland wants them there. The governor doesn't want them there. State senators don't want them there. Members of the House of Representatives, such as Suzanne Bonamici, do not want these federal agents there. The people don't want them there. And the city is basically collectively screaming at them to leave, but they're not leaving. And in an interview with Fox News, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf basically remained defiant and said, I'm not going anywhere. I don't care if they want me there or not. I don't care what the governor said. We're going to be there. We don't need their consent to occupy these cities. And so I don't need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job. We're going to do that, whether they like us there or not. That's our responsibility. So think about how troubling that is. You have the acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf saying, I, as a member of this federal agency, I don't need the consent to treat citizens in U.S. cities like terrorists and patrol these areas. We're going to do it anyway, whether they like it or not. I mean, this is an extension of the war on terror, but in the United States. And it really should scare every single person who cares about democracy. You know, who doesn't want to see us devolve further into authoritarianism. And on top of that, he admitted basically in a different interview that they're arresting people who aren't even necessarily guilty of any wrongdoing because they're being proactive. I mean, look at this Freudian slip. We are having to go out and proactively arrest individuals and we need to do that because we need to hold them accountable. Now after that interview took place, a minority report was trending on Twitter because this is literally what we saw from the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise where people were arrested because there was some device that was able to predict when someone was going to do a crime if they were thinking about it or something like that. It's been a while since I've seen that. But I mean, they're arresting people who aren't necessarily guilty and they're admitting it and they're not telling them why they're being detained. They're not reading them. They're Miranda rights. They're taking them to weird locations. They don't know where they are. I mean, this is exactly what we see from authoritarian regimes. And I know I sound like a broken record because I've said that multiple times, but this really is a new thing in the United States. Like, we have been stripping away our constitutional protections and chipping away at civil liberties in this country, you know, eroding the Fourth and Eighth Amendments. But this is a new thing. This is a new low, even in our low standards in 2020 America. On top of that, Donald Trump also, in spite of all of the pushback that he's getting, has remained defiant, doubled down and threatened to occupy even more cities if they don't get things under control, whatever that may mean, according to him. And then the police are afraid to do anything. I know New York very well. I know the police very well. New York's finest. And the fact is they're restricted from doing anything. They can't do anything. So what are you planning to do? Well, I'm going to do something that I can tell you because we're not going to get New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore. And all of these Oakland is a mess. We're not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats. And more federal law enforcement to some of these cities. More federal law enforcement that I can tell you. In Portland, they've done a fantastic job. They've been there three days and they really have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time. No problem. They grab them. A lot of people in jail, their leaders. These are anarchists. These are not protesters. People say protesters. These people are anarchists. So first of all, note how he just flippantly bragged about how federal agents grab them, grab people as if that's a good thing. Abducting people is something that he's literally bragging about. But on top of that, you know, we saw weeks of protests after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, where police officers in New York, for example, were driving into crowds of protesters shooting pepper spray out the window, marching down streets, militarized police vehicles, you know, yelling at people to go in their homes and shooting at them with tear gas or rubber bullets, whatever it was. I mean, we've seen how brutal these police officers have been, locally speaking. And Trump is complaining that they're too restricted. In New York, for example, where we saw a lot of brutality, they're too restricted. They can't do enough. So that's why we have to send in federal agents, because they need to be more brutal. And I don't have to point out the pattern in the city. See, threatened to send more feds to because he revealed that pattern himself. He said, you know, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland.  So he is using war tactics against his political opponents for personal gain, because he thinks that if he appears really tough on crime and is really pro law and order, this can help him get reelected. This is disturbing on so many levels. This is something that we'd see from a country like Turkey with Erdogan who consolidated his power. And it really, like, again, I don't want to sound like a broken record and saying that this is authoritarian, but it is.  A major American city is being softly pinot-shade and broad daylight. And if we know one thing, if this president and his administration get away with this, it will only get worse. You'd have to be out of your mind or comatose since fall of 2016 not to suspect that this could be a dry run for the kind of general urban mobilization at which the president has been hinting since the summer's protests began. This is not an authoritarian impulse. This is authoritarian government, straight, no chaser. And this administration has a powerful thirst for it. It will do anything if it thinks it can get away with it in order to benefit a president who wants to bring the republic down on its head. I agree with this.  Now he's just doing authoritarianism. This is what we see in authoritarian regimes.  I mean, not necessarily because this this wasn't the catalyst, but I mean, you had people so skeptical of one another that they could be working for the government, people were being abducted.  You saw this happening in Chile with Pinochet, people getting abducted. I mean, this is exactly what you see from dictatorships. But it's happening now in America and Trump may be able to get away with this. I mean, what exactly check is there? I mean, you see people taking legal action, but Trump isn't taking legal action to actually do these things. He's just doing it willy-nilly, right, using his executive power to do just that. So what recourse is there in actuality? Is Congress going to pass a bill stopping this? Will the Senate allow it through? I mean, what can actually be done? And that's what's really scary. If there was some type of mechanism to reign in Donald Trump here immediately, that would be one thing. But the fact that he can do this and all we can do essentially is complain. That's really terrifying. And it doesn't help that the federal agencies and the individuals who are in control of these agencies basically are psychopaths who are loving this, like they're getting their rocks off on this, because the CNN's Frida Gittis explains this is far from over. Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan calling the demonstrators criminals flashed a dark glimpse of Trump's playbook on Fox News Thursday that should concern all Americans who cherish the freedom to exercise their constitutionally protected First Amendment rights. I don't want to get ahead of the president and his announcement. Morgan said, but the Department of Justice is going to be involved in this. DHS is going to be involved in this. We're really going to take a stand across the board and we're going to do what needs to be done to protect the men and women of this country. And that right there is really what makes this disturbing because Trump, you know, it's not like he's saying, hey, Mark Morgan, can you go ahead and send some federal agents to Portland so we can occupy that city and stop the protests from happening? And he's saying, I'm sorry, sir. I just don't have the authority to do that, or I don't feel right about doing that. It's not like he's even saying, look, I listened to the president. I deployed troops or agents to the United States at the request of the president. But I would like this to be, you know, legitimized through legislation. Or I would like the governor to formally invite us there. He's just saying, oh, we're going to do it and I love it. And you have the DHS acting secretary saying the same thing. Basically, we don't need their consent. We're going to go into these cities because we are tasked with rooting out terrorism. And if it's happening domestically, if Trump says these people are basically terrorists, we kind of agree with him. We're also fascists just like him. So I mean, this is disturbing. This is disturbing. You see an expansion of the executive and executive power taking place, you know, since the Bush years, Obama also expanded executive power. Trump's doing the same thing. And Biden will most likely do the same thing. I don't want any president to do this because this may necessarily be something that you like and you're cheering on since it's a president and power that you like. But what happens when, you know, there's a power transition and Trump is no longer in office and now a Democratic president wants to do this in a red state, then what? You don't get to scream about tyranny then if you're saying nothing now. And this is a problem that I have with, you know, these small government conservatives, they're only small government selectively.  I mean, what we're seeing now, this is honestly something that a lot of people aren't taking seriously enough. And I know that this is getting more attention. I know that mainstream media slowly but surely starting to talk about this and its severity, but still this should be so profound to people like individuals in America should just instinctively know that this is so troubling that they should all speak out and be collectively outraged, including Donald Trump's own supporters. And the fact that they're not the fact that probably half the population doesn't even necessarily know that this is happening. It shows that democracy in America is not something that's going to last forever. It's fragile. And we may have, you know, an advantage that other states who devolved into authoritarianism don't have, you know, we have these institutions that have been there forever. But this really shows that democracy is fragile because people, in order for democracy to exist, it has to be legitimate. Like people have to buy into the idea of democracy, right? It can't be selective where they only support democracy, depending on who's in the White House. People really have to deeply believe in democracy in order for it to work. And the fact that so many people in this country, either one don't know or don't care and are cheering on what's happening. It shows you that democracy is in deep trouble. And it's in so much trouble that it's not going to end if Donald Trump is kicked out in November. This is something that requires absolute massive reforms, systemic reforms, institutional reforms, because if we actually believe in democracy and want to protect democracy, we have to make sure that this doesn't happen ever again. Not that someone from our team does it, but that nobody can do this again. This is unacceptable. And I don't think it would be appropriate, even if a governor had requested federal agents. But the fact that they're not and they're doing it without their consent and they're bragging about it, essentially. I mean, this is a, it spells trouble for democracy to say the least.


Hello everyone in this video. I'd like to talk about the GameStop situation that's going on right now And I can't believe what I'm seeing. This is just I've been mulling over this the past number of days Okay, and I've been sort of thinking about that and I did want to make a video on it But I sort of just wanted to just sort of settle and collate my thoughts with it really because what's going on is Incredible. It's unbelievable. What's going on? Now I've used this picture here of a game of chess because this is literally what it feels like is going on It's a game of 3d dimensional chess to put it that way and War Street, but in particular the shortest and these individuals that are Not exactly fantastic people are Losing they are losing to retail investors and A lot of people in a lot of places are very very annoyed right now But in Kate, but in the other sense there's a lot of investors in terms of retail investors that do now feel empowered That they can actually take on Wall Street But in particular within Wall Street, yeah, they're the shortest themselves, right? You know big some some of the institutions investor institutions They're not necessarily bad by default, right? There's a lot of them that they're okay It's just these shortest that are the main problem or one of the main problems and I think that really what's happening is that they're being completely and utterly outsmarted defeated and they just can't accept it and It's interesting. Isn't it what recently happened? We'll go through it in this video and I'm just sort of going through my thoughts and I think sort of presentation style This is the sort of thing we do on this channel is we do sort of presentation style videos with with slides and stuff Do that because I'm a teacher. So that's what I'm used to doing, right? So teaching my daily life by the way, I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not an expert on the stock market I'm just another humble retail investor that's giving my thoughts on this and sharing my Interesting stocks that I like to to share as well, but this game stops the intuition of is unbelievable I've never seen anything like it. I just it just goes to show what we can do if retail investors actually stick together The first point though is what happened recently now They've they've changed this many of the apps I believe are now allowing you to trade Game stop and amongst some other stocks or be it with some restrictions But they are allowing it to happen now However, it was a point where they actually stopped people from trading stocks They stopped people from trading particular stocks that You know, for example game stop, which was being heavily shorted by institutions certain institutions not all of them but certain ones and basically the price shot up because obviously all these retail investors invested in it and trying to make sure that these shortest lose money essentially the Billionaire hedge funds lose a lot of money and many of them have lost a lot of money I think one of them has just folded on the game stop and accepted their loss on this one Which is nice to see but looking into this, you know Who do they think they are in terms of telling us what we can and can't do with our own money? At the end of the day, I think it's our decision to decide what we want to invest in and why we want to invest in it I don't think it's up to these apps to decide Where and as and dictate to us whether we can invest in a stock or not I mean, it's of our own free will the end of the day many of us are, you know, just average people, you know average individuals I'm an average individual I Teach and save money each month and put it aside to put in mind, you know Invest account sort of building that up just like many of you all out there in terms of your putting money aside So then invest, you know, this is your hard-earned cash What's it to say for these big? institutions Big tech and all the rest of it to tell you what you can and can't do with your own Hard-earned cash So I think it's just ridiculous what's happened there and the one-star reviews on the site are rightfully Accredited that of course they need those one-star reviews now the apps themselves the apps are great You know, it's given them as a facility to be able to invest more easily But I think what they've done here in particular is a big mistake. They've realized that because of what they've done They've realized that and they've actually adjusted it But still they shouldn't have done this in the first place They should not try and dictate to us what we can and can't buy on the stock market It's up to us to do that And that's not not fair at all. So it's our decision what we decide to invest in And we all have different views and all that, you know, we all you know, we invest in different stuff But the end of the day, it's our decision. It's our free will to do that and It's just an attack on basic freedoms in terms of finance in the finance sort of space there, but We have attack on freedoms in across the board to be honest, but I'll be following me want to some more of my thoughts. I've just got to say thank you for all the support on the channel I'm trying to reach 10,000 subscribers as fast as we possibly can and I just can't believe how much the channel's been growing recently in the past month or sir I've gained about 6800 subscribers in a month, which is unbelievable to me, you know I'm just a teacher and I'm buying her means and when I say I'm going to expect on the stock market I actually mean I'm nowhere near an expert I just share the stocks that I'm interested in and I share my own research that I find out on these stocks And it's up for anybody else to decide whether you know, it's up to them Whether they want to go into that and do their favorite research But you know, thank you for all the support on the channel And anything any help that you can give her in terms of subscribing Liking or sharing the video. I don't offer any courses or anything like that I don't sell thousand thousand pounds courses everything I put out on the channel is completely free Okay, I'm not selling any courses or anything like that. I just put out content. It's my hobby. I enjoy it That's what I do. So thanks for all the support on the channel moving back into my thoughts Now my problem with a lot of these short as and where I actually, you know, I don't why I don't like these short as is it Is the way that they kind of go about it. So they're short in a company and what they tend to put out is, you know Misinformation disingenuous reports, you know, they kind of twist the information to their obviously or to their advantage And and they're short the company to me that sounds just incredibly Unethical and wrong and I can understand why people are really Annoyed at what they do and I can understand why this has happened in all honesty I believe that this has been a long time coming. I'm surprised that we haven't done this more often You know earlier because of what's what's happened here. It's just a long time coming I can't believe and some of the is some of the entitlement of these individuals that are shorting companies That these really powerful individuals shorting companies You know, the how the apps really surprised that really surprised that was retail investors They're not just gonna continue to take it anymore. So we actually stood up to them and And then now they're so surprised and that they you know, like it's ridiculous, right? So it's just so wrong what they're doing and it's it's unethical Now what we notice now is and what we've recognized is that retail investors us The little guys now sure that we can stand up to the the powerful the rich And all the rest of it we can stand up to them as little guys as little investors The retail investors can stand up to these big institutions these these short as in particular of those institutions And and we can stand up and show how powerful we are actually we are as as well and I mean more and more people are getting involved in investing again and particularly retail investors and I think how technologies has advanced Over the years has made it so much more easier for retail investors to get involved You know, there's so much more accessibility of information of stocks that could go go well and Information overall right because of the rise of technology, which has just helped out retail investors even further no longer is it big institutions and the powerful short as that have all the Available resources to find the information we now have the ability to find the research information ourselves And really make the right decisions, right? So the facts that we've stood up to these individuals They're just showed us that retail investors are becoming more powerful And I think that this is the only the start of it. So it's fantastic. What's going on? And I really do commend what's going on in that sense So those are just my thoughts on that So if you're new to the channel do subscribe and also Ten the notification bell on for any stock news and updates and research we do and Appreciate everybody for the continued support again. I really do. Thank you for that. Okay, and I will see everybody in the next one


Hi, I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another CUBE conversation, this one from BMC Helix's Immersion Days in the Santa Clara Marriott in Santa Clara, California. One of the biggest challenges that every IT organization faces, in fact, every business, is how to start merging greater control through ITSM as well as greater change and evolvability of systems through DevOps. It's a big topic, a lot of folks looking at how best to do it. We've got a great person here to talk to us about it. Dick Stark is the president and CEO of RightStar. Dick, welcome to the CUBE. Oh, well, thanks very much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the CUBE here. Excellent, well, why don't we start? Tell us a little bit about RightStar. Well, sure, RightStar is an ITSM consultancy and we happen to be a DevOps consultancy at the same time. We're also a BMC solution provider and an Atlassian solution provider. Now, we've been a BMC solution provider for 16 years, so we've been in this space a long time. And we've earned several accolades along the way. We made it into the Forrester ITSM service provider. It's not a called a magic quadrant because that's what Gardner uses, but instead it's a wave report. And so we made it sort of into the far right-hand quadrant there. And if you added up all the points, we ended up in North America being rated number five out of all the different ITSM consultancies. So we're very proud about that. And then last year with BMC, we were the North American solution provider of the year in the DSM space. Well, as an ex-Forrester person, I can tell you congratulations. They take those waves very seriously. Let's jump into this question, though, of what does ITSM, from a technology and people and process standpoint, have to do to accommodate some of the changes that are being founded and diffusing out of the whole DevOps world, which is just having an enormous impact on how IT thinks and does. Oh, it really has. And we've been in this space a long time. And ITSM sometimes, I tell the words, are interchangeable. And there are about, if you can believe this, about three million people that ended up getting an idle certification of some sort, like an idle foundation certificate. And over time, that's been a really a big deal. However, idle now is lost, it's luster just a little bit and it's allowed DevOps to sort of sneak in or agile or whatever you want to call it. And idle isn't standard still, though. They've bounced back and bounced back in a hard way and they've come up with what's now called Idle 4. And Idle 4 was just released this year and it takes some of those DevOps principles and it has its own value stream as well. And as a result, Idle 4 or Agile Idle or whatever you want to call it now is taking a little bit stronger position. And when I say DevOps principles, it's things like collaborate. It's things like promote. It's things like operate and automate. It's all about, again, it's all about collaboration and some of these other values that you'll see in DevOps. I guess what happened is, we spent a lot of time in the idle side of things and we did things for process sake and a good example would be change management. And we spent a lot of time putting together this change management processes per this idle framework, okay? And what happened is that a lot of the users then rebelled a little bit because it might take longer to go through and fill out all the paperwork or if it's not paperwork, the online tool set then to do a change than to actually perform the change itself. So Idle got a little bit of a bad rap and so that's where this whole DevOps thing has come in. And the whole idea right now is to get Dev and Ops under the same umbrella because that's not typically very easy to do but it's certainly happening. Well, let's talk about why that intersection's happening, right? So I'm gonna show a little bit of history from my perspective as well. Idle began, first of all, it started in some government agencies many years ago but it started as the basis of it was how do we take better care of the assets within IT which at the time were mainly hardware assets. In many respects what we've seen happen over the last 25, 30 years that Idle's been an extent is that the nature of the assets that IT recognizes as acknowledges delivering value to the business has changed. We've gone from hardware to infrastructure as code. That's where DevOps is. So in many respects what you're saying is that Idle is now trying to bring the best of what it means to do a good job of asset management with a new class of assets namely software as code, infrastructure as code and that's where we have to have that marriage. Have I got that right? That's correct and you don't want to have silos. You wanna be a silo buster if anything else and I just wanted to mention something else that I think is kind of fun. Along with this Idle 4 we now do what's called a Mars lander simulation training. It replaced if you'd heard of the Apollo 13 simulation. Well Mars 4, even though it's Idle 4 specific it's really all about DevOps. And I took the Mars 4 just about a month or so ago and it's a lot of fun. You sit down and the whole objective is to get to Mars and you're a business though and you're going to be selling the data that you're gonna collect along the way and so the whole idea is to make a profit and you have all these different roles that you play. When I went through it I was the release manager then but you might have a business analyst, you might have a service desk person, you have vendors and it's very realistic then and typically like a lot of large enterprises you start playing the game and it's just chaos and you have to go back and try this over and over again until essentially you get it right and I was surprised how easy it is to get sucked in if you're in a big enterprise, you're siloed. You have a specific role that you have to do and you have instructions how you're supposed to do that and you want to stick to it. Whatever your assignment is you have to do that but that's not the right thing to do. Remember it's about collaboration, it's about transparency, it's about posting your goals, posting the results and moving forward from there and so I was surprised how I got sucked into it and so I can understand why we need to make some progress in this space and it's all about getting people to change their behavior a little bit and some of these new tools that certainly help with it as well. Well, going back to what you said, there used to be the three R's of any regime where roles, responsibilities and relationships and so the roles are evolving but often it's just in name only. The responsibilities, you know, the day it's still code, it still has to run on hardware, it's not a bunch of hamsters that are doing things but as you said, it's really the relationships amongst the various actors as we introduce more business people, as technology gets put into position to generate more revenue or to do more with customer experience, the relationships are being pressured, are being really pushed to evolve. So how do you see in your practice, in Wright-Starr's practice, how do you see the relationships between DevOps and ITSM and the business starting to evolve so that you can have a more coherent, comprehensive view of how you make system change? I think in that particular case it's gonna take some time.  I mean, that's why you have agile coaches or that's why you have the scaled agile or the safe framework is because people don't get it and they need to understand how to work together better with others and so it's not gonna happen by just implementing a new tool set, turning the key and then saying, okay, everything's gonna be fine. I mean, it's good to get the integration between all the different tool sets and the technology is certainly there to do that but without having some instruction to begin with and having the darn users cooperate, you're not gonna see that kind of performance improvement or cost savings or whatever it is that you're looking for. You're not gonna see that. Yeah, one of the biggest challenges in any change is abandonment. The user's ultimately abandoned. So as you look at the ITSM tool set that you're utilizing, mainly from BMC Helix, is it, there's a degree of, there's always a degree of pedagogy in the tool. Away it says, here's how you should do things. What are you discovering is that tool set is really catalyzing or helping to catalyze positive changes in your mind within a lot of your customer bases. Well, the thing about Helix, and I'm very excited about this because we're making a lot of good progress with Helix at our different customer base that we have right now. And to give you a good example, George Washington University, we're based in the DC area, they are too. They've been a long time remedy customer. We moved them to Helix. And then just recently, when I say recently it started a year ago in August, they moved to the BMC Chatbot platform. Then this past August, they totally went cold turkey with Chatbots throughout the entire university. That makes a tremendous difference in the performance and not just performance, but also the cost and the efficiency that the university, particularly from a service management perspective, is providing to its university employees and to its students. Just like they mentioned today in keynote session that it's all about mobility and practically all the students there rely on their cell phone day in and day out. And so when they have a question at GW, if it's how do I get a new account? How do I get a parking permit? Gee, the wireless in my dorm room isn't working. You don't pick up the phone and call, nobody does that. You text it in. And this is a Chatbot that's powered by IBM Watson. And it works great. And there's lots of good things that are gonna come out of that. For example, students, I think they probably still have to turn papers in, right? Maybe it's all electronically delivered, but I think you might still have to print out a paper and turn it into your professor. I'm not sure, but. Blue boats are probably still there. Anyway, you're probably gonna do this late at night when the service desk isn't open. So what do you do if you can't get the printer to work? Well, you pick up your cell phone, you text in the issue and bingo, you've got a response. So those are the sorts of things that are gonna make a tremendous amount of impact and it's gonna cause people to change their behavior in really a good way. And another good example, we have another longtime hospital customer. They have a 24 by seven service desk. They're huge and they pay a lot of money to operate that 24 by seven, but they hardly get any calls in at night, right? Not that many people work. So why don't they just turn that in, start using chatbots and think of the ROI. It's just incredible. And I think you're gonna see more and that more situations like that as we move forward. Dick Stark, president, CEO of RightStar. Yep. Thanks very much for being on theCUBE. Thanks very much, appreciate it. Okay. And once again, I'm Peter Burris. You've been watching another Cube conversation from BMC Helix Immersion Days in Santa Clara. Thanks very much. Till next time.