This document discusses leading and embracing change. It begins by stating that leadership involves assuming responsibility for engaging with others to pursue substantive changes that advance a shared purpose. It then discusses different types of change, including continuous change and radical change. A key point is that change is difficult because it requires getting people to behave differently. The document proposes using a "Rider/Elephant/Path" metaphor to enable change: the "Rider" is rational and provides planning/direction, the "Elephant" is emotional and provides energy, and shaping the "Path" means tweaking the environment. It provides tips for directly motivating the Rider and Elephant such as using destination postcards, scripts, finding feelings, shrinking changes, and pra

1. Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D.
www.bretlsimmons.com
NV WealthCounsel Forum
May 6, 2015
Embracing and
Leading Change

2. www.bretlsimmons.com
http://www.slideshare.net/BretLSimmons
simmonsb@unr.edu

4. What do you want
to learn today?

5. What are you going
to do today?

6. Leadership

7. The Process of Leadership
Assume responsibility for the choice to
engage with others and use your influence
to pursue substantive changes that
advance a shared purpose

8. The Process of Leadership
Assume responsibility for the choice to
engage with others and use your influence
to pursue substantive changes that
advance a shared purpose
What is the hardest choice you have to make
when you participate in this process?

9. Change

10. Yesterday’s home runs
don’t win today’s games
Babe Ruth

11. Berger, W., “A More Beautiful Question” (2014)

12. Leading or Lagging?
Competitive Parity
1. How?
Competitive Advantage
1. Why?
2. What if?
3. How?

13. With all that’s changing in
the world and in our
customer’s lives, what
business are we really in?
Berger, 2014

14. Continuous Change

15. Radical Change

16. Law of Change
• “Change happens only as a result of
insurmountable market pressure”
Coine & Babbitt, 2014
• Are you applying the pressure or
reacting to it?

17. Sigmoid Curve (Charles Handy)
Sigmoid Curve (Charles Handy, 1995)

18. Discipline of The Second Curve
“..always assume that we are
near the peak of the first curve
and should therefore be starting
to prepare for the second” (p.57)

22. For anything to change, someone has to start
acting differently. Can you get people to start
behaving differently? (p.4)

23. Change Metaphor

24. Rider - Rational
– Deliberates, analyzes,
looks into the future
– Provides planning and
direction
Elephant – Emotional
– Feels pain and pleasure
– Provides the energy

25. Direct the Rider
Follow the bright spots:
Investigate and clone the successes

26. Destination
postcards:
Shows the Rider
where you are
headed and the
Elephant why the
journey is worthwhile
Change is easier
when you know where
you are going and why
it is worth it

27. Script the critical moves
Be specific about the behavior you want to change

28. Direct the Rider
• What looks like resistance is
often a lack of clarity
• Clarity dissolves resistance

29. Motivate the Elephant
Find the feeling
Motivation comes from
confidence. The
Elephant has to believe
that it’s capable of
conquering the change

30. Shrink the change:
Break down the change until it
no longer spooks the Elephant
Sense of progress is critical

31. Make change a matter of identity, not consequences
Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What
would someone like me do in this situation?

32. Grow your people
Encourage a growth
mindset by praising
effort rather than skill

33. Growth Mindset
• Talent is NOT fixed unless you
believe that it is. Treat talent as
something almost everyone can
earn, not that just a few people
own.
• Everyone can learn to work
smarter
33

34. Motivate the Elephant
Change is hard because people wear
themselves out. What looks like
laziness is often exhaustion

35. Shape the Path
Tweak the environment. When the situation
changes, behavior changes

36. Build Habits
Supportive habits that are easy to embrace and
advance the new behavior

37. Action Triggers: Decisions you make to execute a
certain action when you encounter a certain situation

38. Checklists help educate
people about what is best by
showing then the right way to
do something

39. Rally the Herd
Behavior is contagious; help it
spread

40. Shape the path
What looks like a people problem is
often a situation problem. When you
shape the path, you make the change
more likely, no matter what’s happening
with the Rider and the Elephant

41. The law of crappy
systems trumps
the law of crappy
people
41

42. Application
• Identify a change that needs to happen right
now in your life or work. What are you going
to do about it tomorrow?
• Tell someone about your decision to change
• Think of ways to apply the
Rider/Elephant/Path metaphor to enable the
change

43. Questions?