Talk About Change!

I recently delivered a full day training on Change Management and a good third of it was about communication. For those of you unfamiliar with the Kübler-Ross Change Curve, think about the last time that someone broke up with you: first you get emotional, then you rationalize how much better you are off without that person, then you eat a whole pizza and cry a little bit while watching Moana, and eventually you move on in life.

A tale as old as time.

Organizationally, though, this emotional rollercoaster is what happens to your people when you announce a new strategy, restructure a budget, promote one person over another, lose a client, etc.

mad-->argue-->sad-->move on

Communication happens at all of these stages, but how you communicate needs to adapt.

For example, when someone is just hearing news about a change (The Thrill), you have to take their reactions with a grain of salt. They're having an emotional reaction: SHOCK. Denial. Anger! If you take their responses at face value, you might start walking a road that two hours later would look very different.

Being able to reduce the magnitude of someone's emotional reaction during this phase will make it less traumatic for them and less difficult for you to get them to move through the change curve. The longer they grind their axe about how bad the change is, the longer that they drag their feet in pivoting to the new normal.

Or in other words: if you break bad news effectively, then your people can change more effectively

I'm partnering with the American Marketing Association (AMA) to run a workshop on November 14th on two communication techniques (pre-mortems and retrospectives) that helps you communicate change more effectively, as well as a host of other benefits like delivering better results and fostering team trust. I'll be bringing in a real-life agency professional, Stephanie Torres, to talk about how those practices have actually played out at her agency.

Free webinar! Real skills! Real examples! Come and join us!

A TL;DR from the CRO

Are you telling me that The Thrill is NOT about throwing frisbees, thrillingly?

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

New Blog Post- How to Prioritize Your Strategic Goals

Do you have difficulty saying NO to the really cool but not-that-relevant-to-your-business thing?

*cough cough the newest AI thing

Stop wasting time and money on fleeting trends! Learn how to laser-focus your strategy and achieve real results with these 3 powerful techniques.

ROCK TUMBLING UPDATE

I've finally tumbled through ALL my rocks, or at least the ones I've specifically picked out and ordered from The Rock Shed.

Protip: If you were thinking of getting your hands on consistently sized and packaged rocks, then the Rock Shed is the place to go.

I know this is a real problem that you think about a lot.

I'm trying to decide what my next batch of tumbled stones should be: do I go classic with the Rose Quartz or try something edgy like Coquina Jasper? Or bring back an oldie-but-goodie, the Amethyst?

These are the kind of hard choices that they don't teach you how to solve at business school.

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Caught between a rock and a rock,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Roll around with this short nature documentary on the chubby roly-poly Spheal​