The Wize Way

Episode 126: Mastering Change Management: How Trust Transforms Your Firm

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 126

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In this episode, Brenton Ward and Jamie Johns tackle the crucial topic of change management for firm owners. Jamie highlights the power of trust in driving fast and effective change.

They discuss a real-world scenario where a firm faced resistance when introducing team budgets for the first time. Jamie explains how fear and lack of trust often underlie resistance to change and offers practical tips: listen more, create a no-blame culture, and hold regular one-on-one meetings to build trust.


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Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Brenton Ward:

Hey, Jamie, welcome to another episode.

Jamie Johns:

Thanks, Brenton. Yeah going really well. I hope you're well, I'm doing great. Thank you.

Brenton Ward:

You wanted to cover training with you for the next 15 or 20 minutes because I think it'll be really insightful and helpful for firm owners who are on this journey of building a business that runs without them implementing a lot of the Wize Way projects. It's all around change management and how to approach change within your business. I've got a specific scenario where we focused a firm that was setting budgets with their team. They ever set budgets with their team before and they came up against quite a bit of resistance. So I want to hone in on that particular subject. But just for general context, for firm owners who are going on this journey of changing you know lots of things within their business in order to get it to a place where it can ultimately run without them. Wherever they are on that journey right now, how do you encourage them to approach the change with their team and with different stakeholders in the firm?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah well, change management has to be delivered with leadership. So you know, the first barrier to growth is essentially leadership. But to delve in under that, you know how to implement change. The key word would be trust. So essentially, when trust is high amongst people, change can occur fast.

Jamie Johns:

And even if people want to do a deep dive into this, there's a great book called The Speed of Trust. It's actually written by Dr. Stephen Covey's son and his name is actually Stephen as well. I think he had 11 kids. So essentially what the book covers is that change management and it can be fast when trust is high. But when trust is low, change will be slow.

Jamie Johns:

So to sort of give a context to this and the events and the consulting and coaching and mentoring that we do, it really comes down to trust. And when the trust is high we can get firms to change fast. So that's really sort of you know, to give the context. And the other thing I'll probably refer to is, as I've always loved, the quote by Albert Einstein. He says you know if you've got a problem, you'd spend, you know, in terms of an hour, you spend 55 minutes, you know, looking at the problem and five minutes looking at the solution you know. So that's sort of give you the context around change management and what it takes in terms of the trust, yeah, the level of trust.

Brenton Ward:

So I think it'll be helpful to pull out this scenario that we faced with a particular firm in the last couple of weeks so we can apply what you've just mentioned there to this process and how it looks within a sort of day-to-day context of, you know, building the firm. So we had a firm who had never set budgets with their team before and that's team both locally and offshore and when they had, you know, gone about setting these budgets, they got quite a bit of resistance from the team and even we're using the words that the team were fearful and you know we're really quite concerned around it. So, yeah, walk me through what you walked them through, because I think this would be very helpful for most firm owners who haven't set budgets or haven't quite nailed it and are getting that resistance from their team.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah. Well, look. I mean in terms of that particular case. You know setting budgets or timeframes for jobs is relatively standard worldwide. You know it wouldn't matter what industry you're in, you know all jobs, all tasks. You know whether, in hospitality, you know food has to be delivered. Doesn't it In a certain timeframe, or you'll lose your customers. Food has to be delivered, doesn't it in a certain time frame, or you'll lose your customers. In construction, jobs have to be done in a certain time, otherwise you'll overrun the jobs and there'll be variations. So the point is, I think the particular firm was looking at the symptoms and not the problem. And often you can address the symptoms and sort of have simple workarounds and then say, well, if you don't have budgets, well, let's just look at how many jobs we need to get out. You know, even if you look at that case, it still comes back to time, it still comes back to deadlines, it doesn't matter how you look at it

Jamie Johns:

here the staff, types the team members, when their budgets were introduced, it gave a red flag to them and anytime they said the word budgets, it was just . fear, it just raised fear. And so what happened? Sort of Brenton was, as the sound said you sort of had to dig deeper. Well, why were they fearing the budget? Was it because they thought they'd get into trouble if they went over budget? The answer would be yes, but then you've got to sort of dig deeper and so the important sort of thing in the consultancy, or what the mentoring and coaching would bring, is what I'd sort of come back to Dr. Stephen Covey's I think it's Habit 5, but first seek to understand before being understood. So in that sense it would have been very important to have one-on-ones with the staff members, with the staff members and essentially at the core of it, brenton, just listen, just simply listen and listen without replying and ask questions. Well, you know, why don't you like budgets, why do you fear them but don't necessarily have an answer.

Jamie Johns:

And with these type of communications, particularly when the trust is particularly low and the fear is high, the way that you go about it is really important. Dr Covey even says in his book that body . language is around 60% of the communication, sound is about 30% and words are about 10%, are about 10%. And the other thing is, when you're communicating people with these particular issues, with change management, the key is to listen with your eyes and with your heart, as they say. So it's important that you diagnose before you prescribe, with these situations, particularly around change Indian and when there's fear. There's a great quote that I'll say that you know, the deepest hunger of the human heart is to be understood.

Jamie Johns:

So whenever you sort of come across these symptoms of fear of change, it's just so important that empathetic listening is applied about and, as I said earlier, like not even listening with a reply, and often Dr Covey says not with what he calls an autobiographical reply, and what he means by that is to say, well, I had that situation and that's how I felt. He says don't even go down that path, which is sort of a deeper level of psychology, when you're trying to do change management. But it's essentially when you really step into, as they say, the indian moccasins. You know, if you can understand why people are fearful, then you'll get to the root of the problem. And another way to analyze this brand is in the conversation around these change management topics or fear of the budgets. Consider how much you talk versus they talk. So in these conversations you should be talking maybe five percent of the time and just asking questions, and you should be listening 95 of the time.

Brenton Ward:

I think it's something that's important that shouldn't be overlooked here. As types well as that, it's a conversation because I think to your point before about how messages are received and translated. We often can fall into the trap of just firing off emails on the topic and then you just end up in an email back and forward.

Jamie Johns:

Yes, which doesn't serve anyone. Yeah, look, emails with these type of change management issues is just an absolute no-no. You know absolute rule that you shouldn't go there with email, and these have been face-to-face like So you know, if it's in your office, you'd obviously do it in person. If it's with one of your international or offshore team members, it should at least be done like this on Zoom, and it has to be done in person, eyeball to eyeball, face to face, to really understand, from an emotional point of view, what the person's thinking, why they're fearful of, say, setting budgets and just delving questions. Because, as I said earlier, like in that that particular example, budgets on getting work done on time is just a universal thing. So when I heard that, I thought, oh, there's something deeper here, that, yeah, and that they're fearing, that they're afraid to say potentially just on, to continue on from that experience where the firm owner is going yep, yep, okay, I get that.

Brenton Ward:

Can organize a meeting, can listen 95% of the time, can ask questions, won't reply, post that meeting. What do you do with that information? As the firm owner, how do you take what you found then and be constructive and move forward with it.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, the important point to is that each time you interact with the individual who's fearful that you're building the emotional bank account and just listen, you know and there's another word for saying like it's like a commerce between hearts, as one chap said in this sort of topic. So the practical aspect of that is, post the meetings is to make sure that it's a non-blame culture. But that'll come out of your own personal leadership. So if you dive in sort of straight away and say you know you should have done this and you should have done that and that sort of thing, that's not the way. What you want to do is deposit into the emotional bank account and the way that you do that is by micro-training them. So you don't want to micro-manage, which is like on the chat every half hour. Have you done this? Have you done that? Did you do this? Did you do that? No one likes to be micro-managed. So the important thing to continue to build the emotional bank account and bring down the barriers is to micro train them on how to do tasks like set a guideline. You know the guideline is we'd like you to do this in x hours, but if they don't do it in those number of hours, then you need to work out why, and that's detailed training, though. So that's just micro training and not micro management.

Jamie Johns:

And the thing is too all team members and all staff they love to grow in their career, they love to learn. But the thing is, if you criticize more than you encourage them, then, yeah, they will go into a shell. Then, yeah, they will go into a shell. So if you're sort of more critical of them and do more of the talking in every single interaction, then they will go inwards and they're not going to share with you what they're thinking. And that's why creating a non-blame culture is very, very important, because then they will share with you what they're thinking. Because if you don't understand what they're thinking and why they fear budgets or they're not sharing their share with you like what they're thinking, because if you don't understand what they're thinking and why they fear budgets or they're not sharing their problems with you, then you can't fix it.

Jamie Johns:

You know, a big part of this sort of Jamie divide, whether it's in your own country or with offshore staff, is just not developing the relationship where they feel comfortable with you sharing their problems. You know so if they're not sharing your problems, whether it's personal at-home problems or work problems then you need to their change management journey work on the relationship even deeper, you know, because in all relationships, that honesty of how you're feeling about what you're doing and that integrity in the communication or another word for it is authenticity, you know that's the basis of a good working relationship together. But if you're going to criticize, if you're going to always talk more than the person, then you're not listening. Yeah, you know, you've just got to listen to understand what it is they fear about any changes you're implementing and really diagnose before you prescribe. And that can be only done face to face. You cannot do that on emails or chat and that type of thing.

Brenton Ward:

good bit of territory there, jamie, so I want to wrap it up with just bringing it back to focus on implementation and execution from what we've just covered. So what's the one thing you would like anyone listening to this to take away from this conversation that they could keep moving forward with?

Jamie Johns:

their change management journey.

Jamie Johns:

Absolutely Well. One of the critical things I would do is at least at How a one hour one-on-one session with each of your direct reports once a week, and so you should have a set agenda to that around issues and problems and challenges that the person's facing in their career or in their current role, and then get them to open up so you know whether it's fear of budgets or fear of taking on another task, and just break down those barriers. Build the relationship. Let them do most of the talking. And how do you do that? Ask questions, like you know.

Jamie Johns:

If you powerful, do a deep dive on the topic, get the book how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Cutting, an absolute classic on how to build deeper relationships. There's another book called the Likeability Factor. So if you're in a management role, you have to understand people and you've got to build the emotional bank account and make sure that every edge moment that you work with people, that they go away feeling positive. Imagine, on average, they go away feeling negative about your interaction with them. That's just going to drain the emotional bank account. But every moment, every opportunity you get to work together, make sure that they've left empowered, more knowledgeable. You understand them and then, as you sort of deposit into that emotional bank account, the barriers will come down and they'll actually tell you what they're thinking.

Brenton Ward:

That powerful.

Jamie Johns:

Jamie, that would be the absolute sort of practical tips to today's discussion. a

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, I love it and I think anyone listening to this can definitely take that one thing away and get a lot of value from that very quickly. So thank you for sharing. As always, if you're listening to this, there's a number of different things that we discussed in this training which we will may have or will dive deeper on in other episodes of this podcast, so please do search through the previous episodes. If you can't find it, reach out to us and we will most certainly create one for you. So thanks for listening and, jamie, thanks as always for sharing your wisdom, and we'll see everyone soon.

Jamie Johns:

Thanks, Brenton, bye for now.

Wize Mentoring:

Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com forward slash podcast to download a free copy of the Accountant's 20-Hour Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode.