#004 George Lee Sye | Intersection between change management and business improvement

George Lee Sye, guest · [05:03]I think it's, this, this might not, you know, be the same view that every, that, that a lot of, business improvement professionals would have, but I think change, organizational change, is the overarching methodology, because that's what we're doing. And business improvement, you know, is a big topic within that, where we focus on specific things that improve processes or, you know, parts of the business that we're already working on. To me, change is the overarching concept, and business improvement is a, is a piece of it. You know, strategy improvement, strategy development is another part of that as well. So I think it's a subset, you know, of, the organizational change concept, but a huge part of the role of a business improvement practitioner.

Petro du Pisani, host · [05:48]Yeah, I think so too. I think if you want to introduce change into an environment, business improvement is one of those changes. So you introducing a new way of measuring, you introducing a new way of improving and continuously improving. Which means that people have to accept that change, so you have to take them along. So have to use your traditional change management tools to make sure that people actually accept all of these new ways of, of improving and make it part of the culture of the organization, I guess. when I, when I learned business improvement, I actually used your handbook, Process Mastery with Lean Six Sigma, as my handbook for understanding and implementing business improvement. So what was really nice about this book was how practical it was to use. It's a real, like, how-to for business improvement. It's not all of the theory, it's actually how to apply the theory, which is, which is really cool. So what I wanted to ask you is, I mean, how important is taking people along when using a structured BI techniques?

George Lee Sye, guest · [06:47]Look, I think that's probably the key part of it that is more important. If we, if we're comparing soft skills or the change component with the technical aspects, I think anyone involved in business improvement has to recognize that getting people to buy into ideas is more important than coming up with an idea that they believe is the best one. You know, and there's that common belief that, you know, better to have the solution that everyone's bought into than the perfect solution, because it's the one that will probably stick and make, you know, the difference. And if it, if it's not necessarily that good, they will improve it over time. So as far as I'm concerned, buy-in is more important than me perceiving the technical solution to be correct.

Petro du Pisani, host · [08:23]poll around my colleagues yesterday around if I had an expert in business improvement to interview, what would be the one question that they would like to ask this person? And the question is all around, so we have all of these wonderful business improvement tools and techniques. We have a whole tool set for change management and templates and all sorts of things that we can do. So we've got all of the tools, and that's not the problem. It's... So how... What do we need to do to make all of our changes stick? So how do we create this self-improving business? Because then, as you say, you've been working in the industry for 43 years, and still... There's still so much scope to teach people all of these business improvement and change management tools. So what keeps you going for 40 years doing this, trying to get people to understand these tools and, and use them? So how do we make it all stick?

George Lee Sye, guest · [09:18]I think, look, if, if, if I look back, you know, 20 years ago when I started to get involved in, you know, some formal improvement methodology that had tools, so let's say Lean and Six Sigma, there, there was a real heavy focus on the toolkit, and that's a trap. People get caught in that, you know, that frame of mind where they think the tool does the job, and it would be kind of like a motor mechanic, you know, looks at the toolkit and says that 14 mil ring spanner is what fixes the car. But then over time, they realize that it's the practitioner that's got to create the change, and they just draw upon a tool to help them either come up with a good technical solution or get people to buy into stuff. I think the problem is there's too much reliance on tools, and In addition to that, people are very formal, particularly, you know, formal about their, the way they approach it, particularly in the, you know, the corporate environment, where my knowledge of people today is that if you can connect with people's values specifically, and I'm not talking shareholder value and things like that, I'm talking about, you know, you want to go home and, and be with your family and, and, you know, you want to see your kids again safely tomorrow, or you want more time so you can go fishing or whatever it might be. If you can connect to those values properly, you can get change to stick. But too many people are too formal in making that connection to the people's values, and they don't want to talk openly and softly and, you know, and like I said, really connect with people. And I think that's, you know, one of the major challenges, particularly in a corporate environment.

George Lee Sye, guest · [12:01]The change, the most change I've seen is the way I view things, you know, with it, obviously, because we operate our own business and we're somewhat, you know, insulated from the rest of the industry per se, you know, like other consultants or trainers or whatever. The, the biggest change for me personally has been that shift away from being, you know, a, what, what's the word, maybe, you know, even zealot-like with a methodology and becoming more focused on what really it is we're here, here to do, and that's to solve a problem. The moment people make that shift to, we're here to solve problems as rapidly and as quickly as we can, and only use those tools and methods that help us solve that problem, I think people get results much quicker. So if you go back twenty years, and Harry, you know, who you know, that I'd worked with on the book and, and, have done for over, over twenty years, we were both exposed to that idea that approach Or a piece of work will take sixteen weeks or something. Today we're doing projects and, you know, organizational change around business improvement in two weeks because we've shifted from the toolkit to what our real role is, and that's to solve a problem rather than implement a toolkit, if that makes sense.

Petro du Pisani, host · [13:13]Yeah, it does. I would like to know how you affect organizational change in two weeks. Tell me more about that.

George Lee Sye, guest · [13:22]I think, let me, let me, if I, if I explained it relating to a project, like I, I probably should have said our projects take two weeks to get to the implementation planning point, and as opposed to sixteen weeks, if that makes sense. Yes, that makes sense.

Petro du Pisani, host · [13:34]So that you've shortened the planning cycle. Okay, that makes sense. cause I have, it, it takes, takes more than two weeks for people to want to do something differently.

George Lee Sye, guest · [13:42]Well, sometimes depends. See, like this is, you know, how long does it take people to, like if a plane was, you know, the engine, engines all shut down, and you got a group of people in the plane, you know, who'd never jump out of a plane with a parachute, it would take them two minutes to put a chute on. Gonna jump out. I think the, the stronger connection we make to what drives people to do something different, then I think the quicker the change can occur. And, and I'm a strong believer, an advocate that the only difference between those who change quickly is just the level of inspiration versus those who don't change quickly. A lot of people, you know, everyone goes home every night and changes. They change their clothes, they change their appearance. So we're not averse to change, we're just averse to change that's been imposed on us or makes us feel uncomfortable, and we have choice about whether or not we go through that discomfort.

George Lee Sye, guest · [16:33]This goes back to another career I had. I, I spent a number of years working in a special operations group where we would be asked to recover hostages or deal with events involving firearms or explosives and, you know, high-risk scenarios. And we were involved in a job, and in the job, one of the team members inadvertently fired their gun, and the bullet passed between the team members. And this is when we were making entry into a building. And it got me thinking that there was a big difference between the way people performed in operations and the way that they performed in training. So I wanted to know primarily what were the, you know, what was creating that difference. And it just led me down a path of, you know, studying, you know, a whole bunch of things, neurology, neuro-linguistic programming, way back in the early days of it. I started to do a degree in psychology. I pulled out of that because it kind of, you know, frustrated me a little bit the way they were headed, but it just opened up a whole bunch of stuff around, you know, thinking, human thinking, self-awareness, and its effect on performance. So that's kind of what initiated it, Petro. The one, the one on, like, I originally wrote that book, How to Control Your Brain, I wrote it for my kids. You know, it's very hard to preach in your own backyard. So I wrote the book thinking that, you know, one day when I'm not around, that my kids would probably read it. And I still think that's what's going to happen, but, quite a few people who read it, you know, realized that it was probably more, you know, beneficial to more than just my kids. And, we've ended up selling, you know, quite a lot of those books. They've been downloaded, you know, in the hundreds of thousands of times, and, I think it's a topic just most people are interested in, you know, how do you, how do you control your brain, and how do you solve problems with thinking?

Petro du Pisani, host · [18:16]Yeah, so what is the answer to that question? How do you control your brain?

George Lee Sye, guest · [18:20]you've got to recognize what it is that causes you to, you know, focus on things. Pretty much, you know, in, in, in my belief, it's just internal communication. It's the way that you communicate to yourself. And most people, I would say, communicate in a reactive way. They're not aware of what they're doing, whereas, you know, getting control of your focus is about getting control of how you talk to yourself. You know, do you get up in the morning going, you know, you know, what sucks about today? Or do you get up in the morning going, what's good about today? And that one question, you know, just shifts what you focus on, and I think it all comes back to that, how you feel is based on what you focus on. You know, if you get up in the morning going, like I got a mate that says, he said it's a good day because he looks in the mirror and, when he breathes, there's frost on the window. He knows he's still alive. So, you know, and, and I think that's just coming back to, you know, him focusing his brain, which I think is the key to the whole thing, you know, and who wants to feel like, you know, feel bad, but unfortunately most people seem to think that they have to feel bad about things all the time.

George Lee Sye, guest · [24:44]I think I wrote a book called, Kill Your To-Do List Before It Kills You. And I called it that because, for, to, for a couple of reasons. The, the primary reason being the way that you create the list is the most important part of it. It's not that, you know, you have a list or you want to get rid of a list. The best way I know of to make a list is to start at the result end, you know, what's the result you want to get or the outcome you want to get at the end of the week, then listing those things that you need to do in order to get that outcome. And I think that's where a lot of people's lists come unstuck. They just write stuff down without thinking about how they all collectively create an outcome, and then they become overwhelmed. So that's the way I write lists. So yes, I do create them, but through that process. And the second thing, your question was about the, my favorite app. I've got an app called Things on my phone, which just synchronizes across my, you know, iPad and computer. It's called Things because it's the things that you're going to do. It's a list app, and it's super, super simple to use.

Petro du Pisani, host · [25:46]Yeah, the one I use is called Wunderlist. Wunderlist. Wunderlist like German, and it's, it, it also gives you a lot of categories as to how you can make lists and, and you can tick stuff off, and it gives you a very satisfying little jingle when you tick stuff off the list, so I enjoy using that one. It does.

George Lee Sye, guest · [26:04]I don't

Petro du Pisani, host · [26:05]know, only list makers would understand that, I guess.

George Lee Sye, guest · [26:11]One thing on list I'd comment, because a lot of people listening, you know, would create lists, and I think, you know, people are very good at, you know, writing out to-do lists and things like that. The, the real test of whether or not they're serving you is when you look at that list and ask this question, how many of the things at the top are all driven by deadlines? If that's the, the case, whether, you know, the five, ten top things there are driven by deadlines and you're doing them because mentally you have to do it, then I think the process of developing that list is flawed, is flawed, because what that's saying is that everything you're doing primarily is driven by pain, you know, avoiding missing a deadline and avoiding getting Something you don't want. So it's a little tip for people, you know, that, you know, when we're coaching people around that exactly, that work out how you're going to create that list so you become more proactive than reactive in creating it.

George Lee Sye, guest · [30:36]This is going to depend who we're talking to. I, I think people are over-focused on making changes. I think there's too many changes in most organizations that I've seen. You know, I've looked at a few hundred companies, you know, in detail over the last twenty years. Probably the first thing that jumps out to me is that every single one of them are trying to do too many changes, and they do those changes in many cases through the value stream without understanding the relationship of the changes. Whereas I think the smarter companies today realize that they have to stabilize in order to be able to make progressive change, because it's the stability from a stable base that they can identify what to change and how to change it. And, you know, there's a few examples in Australia, I won't say which companies, that have killed their change initiatives because they've made changes that in isolation, like, you know, the, let's look at a mining company, for example, up at the mine, you know, they could get a bigger machine that moves more material, and they could quantify the value that that generates. Yet, unless it gets through the value stream to the customer or when they sell it, there's no value generated at all. It's actually a loss. And I think that would be the number one issue in, you know, companies making change. Too many changes across the value stream, they're measured or quantified in isolation, you know, within their own silos, and when you put them all together, they don't add up to the change value that they think they get.

Petro du Pisani, host · [32:04]There's this whole Concept called Change Saturation. So if you think about all of the people, who are affected by all of these various change initiatives, and they're coming from various directions, there'll be changes coming from HR, changes coming from business improvement, changes coming from the strategic teams, and they're all impacting the same people, but in isolation almost, and some of them even collide with each other. So you have this other concept called Change Collision, where you've got colliding instructions from various different stakeholders to the same people who have to go and implement the change. And in the end, it just doesn't add up to all of the benefit that the individual projects are said to deliver, because they collide with each other and they saturate people and people go, this is too much, I can't actually deal with all of this change at the same time, and something's going to suffer. So I think it's best to focus on maybe one or two key things that need improving maybe, and then, and not to overload people with too much change, because you just can't.