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- 45% of employees say, "I
feel positive about change."

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When you ask that question
to C-level executives,

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"How do you feel about change?"

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70% of them say, "I feel positive."

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And that gap between the 45% of employees

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and the 70% of executives,

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that's change distance.

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- So Julia, I read your book

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and it argues that change distance,

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which you define as
essentially the distance

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between what the executives experience

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and what the employees experience,

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that's a key lever of transformation.

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The companies that get it
right, what are they doing?

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- So, when we talk about change distance,

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it comes out of actually
a really large experiment

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that we ran with 1,000
executives, 5,000 employees.

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I can give you a version of it now.

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We call it The Change Game.

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So, like, you would come into our lab

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or one of our experiments

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and I'd say to you,

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"Okay, Duarte.

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A change is coming to
your professional life,"

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which, remember, is the way

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that a lot of people find out

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about how something's
going on at the company.

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A change is coming to
your professional life.

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You don't know the nature of
the change, its impact on you,

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or the size of the change.

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How do you feel? Positive,
neutral, negative.

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- Always a little bit negative,

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because what's gonna happen?

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- So, when we run this experiment,

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that is actually how most people feel.

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Not totally negative,

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but only about 45% of employees
say, "I feel positive."

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When you ask that question
to C-level executives,

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"How do you feel about change?"

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70% of them say, "I feel positive."

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And that gap between the 45% of employees

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and the 70% of executives,

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that's change distance.

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Our argument is it's the job of executives

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to bridge that gap,

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to remember that people

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are starting many steps back from them.

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And so, executives, companies,

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leadership teams who bridge the gap,

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what are the things that
they do really well?

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We think that there are a couple of them.

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One is they agree upfront

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why the organization is changing,

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what is going to change,

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but really specifically,
how it is going to change.

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What behaviors do we
expect to be different,

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what do we think will be
different about your specific job

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and how you perform it,

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and are really clear
with people about that.

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So, they work through a lot
of the conflict upfront.

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And behavioral science will tell us,

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often in our excitement
to get something going,

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we skip over those steps.

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And then the second thing

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that I think they do
incredibly well is say,

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"Look. Time is always gonna be limited.

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Money is always going to be limited."

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Even in the, like, most
well-resourced organizations,

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attention is always going to be limited.

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But what we can do,

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like, a resource that we can increase

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is the energy that people have for change.

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'Cause people have some
choices about how much effort,

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and how much commitment
they bring to something.

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And if we can increase what
we talk about as agency,

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the sense of power, confidence, motivation

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that any individual feels,

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you actually suddenly can
get a force multiplier

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through the organization where people say,

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"I'm not working on the
CEO's special projects,

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but I'm part of something bigger.

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I'm part of a heroic mission."

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- So on that note,

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because what you're essentially
talking about is buy-in.

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How do you get the employee
to buy into something

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that on the surface might be threatening?

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- You know that often misquoted
line from "Field of Dreams,"

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you know, "If you build
it, they will come."

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And there are so many
transformation programs

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that sort of assume if you
build it, if you get it started,

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they will come.

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No, they won't.

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Like, if you build it,

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it turns out they probably won't come

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because not only did you
maybe not build something

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that they had asked
for in the first place,

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but you didn't consult
them in the building.

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And so, we talk about this,
like, concept of take-up,

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what a lot of people talk about as buy-in,

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to say you have to ask yourself,

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"If these were my customers,

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if this change that I was
creating was for a customer,

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what might I do differently to
invite them to participate?"

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Because generally speaking,

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people who feel as
though they've had a part

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in creating something
value it much, much more.

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- When does a successful leader know

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that he has what you call this take up?

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What a lot of people consider this buy-in.

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At what point does he know this?

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- So, let's talk about the
behaviors that are dangerous.

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So, sometimes you get like
a little way in and say,

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"Oh, we've gotta figure
out what's going on.

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We've gotta go and get some ground truth

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about what's happening."

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And often, someone very senior

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will go out to a store or a plant

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and they'll, like, do a
royal visit, basically.

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And they'll come back and they'll say,

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"Well, I went out, I talked to people,

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I asked them how it was going

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and everyone said it was great."

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Of course they did because
hierarchies are very real.

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If instead we say, "Hey,
really consistently,

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can we measure people's emotions?"

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Ask them for feedback,

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use all the good customer
feedback tools we have,

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surveys, net promoter scores,

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"Would you recommend this
transformation to a colleague?"

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All the good scientific tools that we have

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to understand people's emotions
and thoughts about change.

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Suddenly, you can do
something really helpful,

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which is to say it's not possible

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that we all feel one way about something.

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But now, I can be really
targeted in what I do

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because we know one thing
for sure at the outset.

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When we research and ask people,

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"How do you feel about change?"

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And we say, "Just tell me the two emotions

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that come to mind."

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The first emotion is
curious, which is great.

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Like, that's super encouraging.

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People say, "I'd like to learn more."

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And the second emotion is anxious,

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- [Duarte] Second emotion is anxious.

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- And so, you've got people in
this state of curious anxiety

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for a pretty long time
until you give them other,

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things to focus on or
reasons to feel differently.

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- And you minimize that change distance.

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Thank you so much, Julia.

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- Thank you.

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(bright music)