How Change Really Happens with Kristy Ellmer

Let's cover the main premise of the book.

I want you to, I want to get everybody on the same page who hasn't had the chance to read it yet.

Tell us about Change Distance.

So I think one of the things having led so much transformation that was frustrating me was if you actually look at the success rates of transformation or change any large scale change, they're actually quite bad.

And when we look at it now, we just did a study 2000 transformations and, um, Only 25% of transformations are continuing to be successful and that's over 20 years.

And as someone who has been a part of it and seen so many successes, it actually frustrates me that they aren't getting better.

And particularly because we actually know what it takes now to make change successful.

One of the things that we started to look at when we wrote the book was this idea of how do executives and how do employees actually experience change? And there is a real distance.

That's what we call the change distance and how they just look at the word change

or

how they feel about it.

So the opening really looks at asking executives, how do they feel about change? If we just ask the simple question of a change is coming, how do you feel positive, neutral or negative? 67% of executives feel positive.

If we ask the same question of employees, it's about 48% that feel positive.

And so when we look at that, there's a real distance and we've just said a change is coming.

We haven't said bad, good, anything.

And executives are already excited.

And we ask them, do you think it's going to be successful? And it's something like 70% of them think it's going to be successful when we know the odds are actually stacked against them.

And so that real mental gap of how you're thinking about change is depending on if you're an employer or an executive, can be very different.

And that's just before you even start.

That's just the way

it gets going.

Yeah.

What role

does their perceived sense of agency play in that gap?

I think one of the things we looked at a lot was that idea of agency.