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Hello and welcome to Label Sessions Presents.
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Label Sessions is a global platform that connects you to the best advice from the most interesting
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people, whether you want advice, mentoring or ideas.
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I'm Nick Sherrod, co-founder of Label Sessions.
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In this episode, Maxine Mackey of Label Sessions talks to Anna Vogt.
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Anna is a design-led passionate innovator.
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Previously of BlackBerry and IBM, she is now leading the charge at SunLife, looking for
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new ways to change the status quo and bring forward global transformation in business.
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Maxine talks to her to find out more.
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Anna, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Could you just introduce yourself to the Label Sessions audience, please?
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Sure.
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My name is Anna Vogt.
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I am an unlikely technologist with an English degree that ended up at an insurance company
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trying to drive change.
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You're someone that works in the intersection of transformation and change.
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Can you tell us a bit around how change really happens at big businesses and I guess in the
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insurance world too?
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Well, I think the story or the lesson that I learned really early on was a lot of big
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organizations think change happens by kumbaya.
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So like everyone comes together and there's muffins at a meeting and a very senior person
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says things are going to change and then everyone eats the muffin, drinks the coffee and goes
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back to their desk and radically behaves differently.
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And what I found is as much as everyone would like to believe that that's how change happens,
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it more often happens with someone like myself who lacks the gene for self-preservation and
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gets super passionate about something and is willing to kind of throw themselves off
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a ledge without a parachute.
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And a lot of people will watch that person and go, hmm, that's dangerous.
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I don't love what they're doing, but it's interesting.
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It's interesting what they're doing, but it scares the heck out of me.
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And then they watch and if that person doesn't kind of crash and burn and die in the valley,
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if the parachute opens and like wind comes up and you kind of have a bit of flight, people
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say, huh, they didn't die.
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That's interesting.
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Well, now maybe I want to be part of it now that it's de-risked enough that the person
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lived to tell the tale.
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And so I think this idea of trying to let people, let the people that are that 10% of
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people that are bleeding edge that are always going to push the envelope, giving them a
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little time and space to do that.
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And then making it safe for other people at their own time, like not forcing them to do
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some of these things, but to actually when they feel ready to engage is the way that
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kind of change happens slowly and then really fast.
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And I think the reason organizations see that is because the person trying to affect change
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has probably been beating their head against a cement wall for quite some time.
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And then all of a sudden the stars align, there's kismet and the wind comes into your
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parachute and lifts you up.
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And then it happens quickly because everyone says, I've been interested about that crazy
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idea for quite some time.
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And now that I see that it's not so crazy, I'm absolutely willing to get in the boat
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and start to row.
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Amazing.
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And I wanted to spend a moment talking about what are the types of things that can be instruments
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of change, like the wind under the parachute and really creates momentum.
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Because I know we've talked privately about the power of insights to essentially bust
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myths in senior management's minds in order to think about a problem differently.
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Can you talk me through some of those things that turn people's heads in an organization
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as change is happening and what actually gives them the confidence to kind of jump off the
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ledge as well and embrace either a new way of working or a new way of a new product?
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I think something that's so, so useful is an executive that allows a group of people,
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however that group of people is chosen and whatever makes sense organizationally, to
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have a little bit of time and space to do some of that work.
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I think of the times in my career where we did kind of the biggest change and a lot of
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it was because we didn't have, let's call it organizational buy-in, but we probably
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had one person that said, listen, you have 90 days.
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I like what you're doing and they would like it for either a revenue opportunity or sometimes
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I found executives who are early in their career and have a lot to prove or are very
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much at the end of their career and don't take the, I want to preserve my legacy and
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I'm going to kind of steer the ship gently into the moonlight.
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People that say, I want to just swing for the fences one last time before I retire.
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They're amazing people.
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When I worked at IBM driving mobile change, those were the sorts of executives that said,
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I am willing because either I feel like I have less to lose by doing something radical
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than I do with maintaining the status quo because I'm either young or not from this
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industry or for whatever reason people are kind of looking at me saying, prove yourselves
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or people very much at the other end of the spectrum that say, perhaps my entire career
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I felt very constrained and now I have three years and I'm going to just do this absolutely
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amazing thing in order that I feel like my legacy was for this innovative thing now that
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I'm at the end of my career.
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And how does it feel to work in that environment where you have this 90 day burning platform?
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I think for people that have had that chance and I think the older I get, the more I realize
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how lucky I was to get those chances, but it's terrifying because there's no like PowerPoint
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to hide behind.
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There's no like monthly metric thing that you can kind of game and say that it was fine.
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It's full on, you're in the spotlight.
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Is this going to go or is this not going to go?
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And if it doesn't go, you kind of own it.
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And so it requires someone that's willing to fail and fail fairly publicly.
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And it also requires an executive to give you that chance.
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But whether you win or lose, the lesson in doing that work is immeasurable for the organization
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and for the people that are allowed to do it.
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And so a lot of what I'm doing now is saying to people at very early stage of that journey,
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not only is it going to pay dividends, so it is going to be a good use of your time,
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you're going to learn a whole heck of a lot that you're not going to learn any other way.
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The school of hard knocks is the best way to earn a PhD because you don't forget those
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lessons.
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And if you were having a conversation with somebody that has a mandate for change or
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to test or pilot a new product, what advice would you give them to keep their head up
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and navigate those kind of potential failures and kind of the, I guess, the natural stresses
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that happen within a team and then within a wider organization?
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I think knowing that it's going to take multiple goes to be successful, and the best advice
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is use unconventional means.
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So if the way in which things work at your company is you go to this tribunal and they
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bless the project and then you get money and you do the thing and you didn't get it going
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that way, I call that the front door.
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So you knocked on the front door.
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The front door did not answer.
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But there's a window, there's a back door, there's maybe a cellar door.
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There's other ways to get climb through the window.
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I've climbed through windows and to try to, and different stakeholders.
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So the stakeholder that you think you need, I mean, maybe you can't get the first go around,
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but there may be other stakeholders who will be super supportive and it might take five
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steps.
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So you might think it's a one step job.
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It might be a five step job.
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And then that's how much do you want to push the idea, right?
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Is the juice worth the squeeze?
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Let me ask you, how important do you think telling the story during a change project
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is or waiting till you've had a win and you can share that win with people?
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Do you have a point of view on those two different approaches?
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My personal belief is the more you can talk about what you're doing as you're doing it
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in a way that's engaging to people, the more useful that energy will be.
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So I'll give you an anecdote.
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Many years ago, we were trying to do work with IBM when I worked at BlackBerry.
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And fundamentally, we thought the bias of IBM was they weren't totally bought into mobility
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as a concept.
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This was maybe 2005.
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So it was more of a nice to have for them and it was an absolute core business for us.
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And as we were explaining what we wanted to do with them, I just looked around and thought,
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I don't actually think we have fundamental agreement on the value of the affordance of
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this technology.
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And if we don't have that, it doesn't matter what we say up here on this stage as tap dancing.
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So it was a very risky thing to do.
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But I think it paid off in dividends later where I kind of said, I'm just going to stop.
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Do we believe that collaboration in the future is going to exist beyond the blue ethernet
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cable?
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And there's this long pause and they all looked at each other and they went, maybe.
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And it was like, in that moment, it's like, okay, so there's not quorum on this.
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It won't matter what our use case is.
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We need to fix the fundamental problem, which is showing them the affordance of this technology,
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which they quickly got.
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It was a time thing too.
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We were a little early.
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They were a little late.
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We didn't really explain it.
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We jumped right to kind of, we want to do this thing on this platform with your IP.
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It was too much too fast for them.
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But over time, we met in the middle.
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And once you get quorum on what the actual fundamental thing you're trying to do is,
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people jump to the use case and they forget, unless you have violent agreement on this
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matters and we should work on this, no one's going to put in the time and effort to get
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to the thing that you want to actually do.
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I think that's such an interesting anecdote and really applicable for any kind of innovation
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and first-of-kind product development practice.
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Because normally when you're having conversations with say, or trying to get by in through the
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front door, potentially you're at the cellar door at this stage, you're so as a team, you're
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so embedded in the topic, you're a few steps ahead of anybody else.
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And I think that's a really great piece of advice to find that way to either meet in
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the middle or this agreement of, not really meet in the middle, but the agreement of there's
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a reason why we're doing this.
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It could be a burning platform, but there is a need and we're in agreement that there's
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a need, this could be an answer.
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Are we going to proceed rather than talk to them about the use cases?
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I think it's interesting to bring that conversation back.
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This podcast is brought to you by Label Sessions, the global platform that connects you to the
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Let me ask you a bit around change and when change is embedded.
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I think that I've noticed a lot in change and transformation agendas that there's a
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real, in the language that's used, there's a real push to have the whole business together.
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And what I mean by that is the whole organization with you at every step of the way and huge
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kind of a company wide initiative.
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So what you said earlier, I thought was really powerful around actually change happens really
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slowly and then happens really fast.
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Is there a, it could be more powerful actually with people leading change agendas to find
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their almost front line and then use them to deliver the first wave of change and then
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address the wider business.
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Like what advice would you give to leaders trying to change a culture of an organization?
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Yeah, I read this analogy the other day about different people in different parts of the
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organization and I think you don't want the whole organization full of people like me.
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It would be chaos every single day.
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So there's people like me in an organization and they're useful in some respects.
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I had a boss that said to me, Lord, you just don't want to water the flowers, do you?
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I said, no, I want to design the flower.
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I want to find the flower.
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I want to figure out the pot for the flower.
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And once the flowers in the pot, like don't trust me ever to remember to water the damn
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thing.
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Someone else will take great pride in making sure that thing is watered on schedule.
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That person is not me.
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And I think in organizations that is also true.
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There are absolutely people who want to run consistent operations and big organizations
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need people like that.
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And we shouldn't punish people that have that orientation because we need them.
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We should let them do the things that they're good at and that they want to do.
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I'll tell you a story.
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When we were doing some of the work at BlackBerry, we had to build a new value proposition for
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this thing that we ultimately got IBM to agree to.
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So you can imagine IBM marketing guidance at that time, BlackBerry marketing guidance,
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massive rule books about what we could and could not do.
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And so I approached this guy to say, you know, I'm not a marketer per se.
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Like I did this thing.
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We have this legal agreement.
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We're going to go to market.
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Like could you work with me and could we figure out what we should say honoring both of these
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value propositions?
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And he just flat out was like, no.
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And I said, sorry, what?
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And he just went, no, that's not my job.
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And I said, oh, okay, you're in marketing.
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This is like a marketing thing we're trying to do.
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And he very like abruptly said, it's not in the guidance though, Anna.
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And I said, well, I know it's not in the guidance because we just made the thing.
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So it couldn't have been in the guidance.
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We made the guidance last year.
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So we didn't know we were going to make this thing.
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We made the guidance.
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And he said, I know, but it's not in the guidance.
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So I basically know.
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And flash forwards, like I ended up doing some of it badly because I'm not a marketer.
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This gentleman's boss called me and said, why are you doing my team's job?
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I kind of gently explained I didn't want to, and I definitely thought there was someone
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better than me to do it.
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And then he quickly realized the resistance of some of his team.
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And I said, listen, it's not for me to kind of call out this guy who did not feel comfortable
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because I really quickly realized I could have pushed or been difficult, but you can't
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make people be creative.
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You can't make people do good work.
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So I'm like, he doesn't want to do this.
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He's scared of this work.
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So it's not going to be good.
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And when he came back around, when the product was successful, wind in the parachute, the
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same guy called me to say, this is now very successful and I'm really interested in it.
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I always have been interested in it.
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And I would love to work with you.
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And so at first I thought, my God, you were so difficult to me.
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But then the older I get, the more I realized he just wasn't ready to get on the bus yet.
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It was too early of a bus stop for him.
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And he wasn't that he didn't like the idea or thought it was stupid.
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It was just too scary for him at the time I asked him.
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I was a little early.
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And I guess that what I have a sense that you operate with a lot of grace to people
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to say, that's fine.
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Well, that wasn't the stop for you.
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Jump on the bus when you're ready.
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Which I think is a really important thing for people leading change to acknowledge that
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your message isn't going to land with everyone at every time.
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And actually you're better to have that front line of people.
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And then it really builds confidence in what's happening.
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But let me ask you something, because I think that people leading change and transformation
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at big organizations are facing sometimes often tension in the business when people
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aren't ready to get on the bus when you have swallowed them too.
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How do you kind of stay motivated and cultivate your wellbeing in that kind of a wider environment?
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Well, I think finding your people, right?
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There's a group of experienced design practitioners inside the company and it's good.
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You need a good vetting session of like, oh my gosh, why is this so difficult?
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So I think that's really useful.
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And I think, again, to your point about grace, I just say this a lot to practitioners to
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say you need to treat the people that you're trying to affect change with, with as much
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empathy as you often have for users.
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We did a session and we had quite a few actuaries and underwriters in it.
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And one of the underwriters kind of said, I'm really interested in all this and what
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you're doing, but it's so different for me.
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And just acknowledging that.
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Like, yeah, in fact, that must be extremely challenging.
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So for someone to be willing to go along for the ride, like that's huge.
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And so just don't kind of react to, oh, this is so different and weird.
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It's like, yeah, for you it is.
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And I totally get that.
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And I'm so appreciative that you kind of put down your reservations and came along for
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the ride because the same person basically said, like, I think this is actually useful.
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I'm just trying to get my head around it, which is a really honest and fair answer.
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The only way you can respond is with empathy to say, like, thank you.
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And at the end, what you really highlight is the importance of the people element in
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respect.
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And I think that was a great point around the empathy.
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You need as much empathy for the people who are, I guess, on the precipice of change as
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you are for the users of potentially an end product.
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I think that's something that people often forget.
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It's like, this is a dick tat.
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It doesn't really work.
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But remember to kind of a stage human and talk to people who are kind of maybe struggling
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with doing things differently.
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Well, and there's lots of reasons for that, right?
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Like they don't understand the change.
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They think the change will negatively affect them.
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They're confused.
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And there's lots of confusing messages in big organizations about change.
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So we shouldn't be surprised that people get confused.
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And change, general change is hard.
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Like in your own life, if there's ways that you live and things you eat and places you
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go, like people kind of like routine.
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The pandemic proved this to all of us.
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All of a sudden, it's like everything you know, you can't do anymore.
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And people freaked out.
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It's like, you can't do that.
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And what do you do when change doesn't go as planned?
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I think the first step I always take is to think about the human reasons why that didn't
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work and not that like that person is difficult and just won't do the thing.
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But like if that person is being difficult, why are they being difficult?
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And I always say to my team, if something is confusing to you, there's like a piece
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of information you don't know.
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So if you can't kind of make sense of a strategy or a position or a tactic or whatever, it
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probably means that there's something that you're just not aware of that is informing
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why they're doing it.
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People are not doing this for no reason.
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You may disagree with the reason, but if you're baffled, it's probably because you're missing
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information.
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So don't make it a personal thing when it's an informational thing.
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Like figure out why and then have a conversation about is this true or not?
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Is it useful or not?
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Like do I agree with it or not?
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But that's secondary to understanding the actual rationale.
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So let me ask you, what tips would you give to other transformation leaders?
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Push harder than you think you can.
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I mean, the worst thing that will happen is you'll get, you know, that was too much, in
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which case you can kind of dial it back.
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But I think inertia is a much bigger danger than kind of too much change.
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The organizations recoil at too much change.
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But I think the thing that can crater them is inertia more than change.
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But figure out how to meet people where they are.
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So I feel like if you're this innovator, design thinker, or experienced design, you live in
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this space, then it kind of behooves you also to think about the person that you're trying
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to affect change with.
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And then because you have the idea that you're trying to get to, but also like the path that
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you have to walk to get there.
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So equal parts on those two trails to say, like, why would this person do it?
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How, like, why is this going to be good for them and their boss?
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What kind of roadblocks are there?
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How can I mitigate some of them as much as the value proposition the users are saying,
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like to dual track it a little bit?
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I mean, what is it about your industry that you love the most?
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I guess change, transformation, and now the insurance world that you inhabit?
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I joined because I thought, my gosh, there's so much work to do.
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Like I love a hairball.
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So this is a big hairball because the industry itself has delegated, for the most part, client
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experience to advisors.
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So we've just by function of our distribution, not being close.
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And so that's changing.
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The whole industry is changing.
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Sun Life's doing lots of amazing things to try to change.
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So we're headed in the right direction, but it is to get it right for people.
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You're getting it right for people at the moment that they need some kind of trustworthy
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thing the very most.
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So keeping people healthy, you know, a loved person dies and it's a horrible time in your
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life.
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Like I can't think of a better thing to try to get right from a client experience perspective.
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If you were going to have an autobiography or a biopic, what would the title of your
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biography be?
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Oh my gosh.
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She was ungovernable.
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I don't know why I'm not working.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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Just went on a hike and like my girlfriend that was up with me was like, sorry, this
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is insane what we're doing.
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It wasn't insane.
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It was so fun.
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It was an astro hike.
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We were three kilometers up to a mountain with an astrophysicist who did an interpretation
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of all the stars in the sky at midnight and then with headlamps and then hiked back down.
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And it was epic.
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I would do it again tomorrow, but it was a little like, I just signed up and I was like,
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this should be fun.
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We learned, I learned about the origin story of the Big Dipper.
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It was magic, but a little crazy.
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Oh, amazing.
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Oh, why aren't you knowing living on the edge?
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Last question.
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On a scale of one to 10, Anna, how weird are you?
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Oh, like nine and a half.
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I'm pretty weird.
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Love it.
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I love it.
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Anna, thank you so much.
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It was amazing to talk to you about how people make change happen, especially when I think
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it's just so exciting because your stories are so rich in the human element.
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And actually I just get a sense that working with you is such a pleasure and you do it
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in such a human way.
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Well, that's so very kind.
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I do try, I think, you know, no one ever said that it was, we didn't have enough humanity
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and there's always room for a bit more, especially these days.
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So try to be kind and make change.
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Like the whole thing is if you really want to make change, you can't do it alone.
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So for everyone that, you know, I spend time talking to executives about, it's not a solitary
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genius saying, aha, it's really teams of people.
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So if you can't foster that in the organization and if people in those teams can't kind of
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radiate that to other people in those groups, I mean, you'll never be successful.
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So it's also self-serving.
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Like if you want to actually do the thing, you kind of have to do this too.
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So concludes Label Sessions Presents.
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Be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast, no matter your platform.
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And of course, start your journey with us today at labelsessions.com.
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Hello and welcome to Label Sessions Presents.
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Label Sessions is a global platform that connects you to the best advice from the most interesting
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people, whether you want advice, mentoring or ideas.
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I'm Nick Sherrod, co-founder of Label Sessions.
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In this episode, Maxine Mackey of Label Sessions talks to Anna Vogt.
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Anna is a design-led passionate innovator.
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Previously of BlackBerry and IBM, she is now leading the charge at SunLife, looking for
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new ways to change the status quo and bring forward global transformation in business.
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Maxine talks to her to find out more.
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Anna, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Could you just introduce yourself to the Label Sessions audience, please?
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Sure.
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My name is Anna Vogt.
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I am an unlikely technologist with an English degree that ended up at an insurance company
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trying to drive change.
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You're someone that works in the intersection of transformation and change.
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Can you tell us a bit around how change really happens at big businesses and I guess in the
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insurance world too?
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Well, I think the story or the lesson that I learned really early on was a lot of big
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organizations think change happens by kumbaya.
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So like everyone comes together and there's muffins at a meeting and a very senior person
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says things are going to change and then everyone eats the muffin, drinks the coffee and goes
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back to their desk and radically behaves differently.
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And what I found is as much as everyone would like to believe that that's how change happens,
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it more often happens with someone like myself who lacks the gene for self-preservation and
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gets super passionate about something and is willing to kind of throw themselves off
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a ledge without a parachute.
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And a lot of people will watch that person and go, hmm, that's dangerous.
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I don't love what they're doing, but it's interesting.
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It's interesting what they're doing, but it scares the heck out of me.
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And then they watch and if that person doesn't kind of crash and burn and die in the valley,
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if the parachute opens and like wind comes up and you kind of have a bit of flight, people
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say, huh, they didn't die.
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That's interesting.
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Well, now maybe I want to be part of it now that it's de-risked enough that the person
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lived to tell the tale.
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And so I think this idea of trying to let people, let the people that are that 10% of
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people that are bleeding edge that are always going to push the envelope, giving them a
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little time and space to do that.
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And then making it safe for other people at their own time, like not forcing them to do
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some of these things, but to actually when they feel ready to engage is the way that
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kind of change happens slowly and then really fast.
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And I think the reason organizations see that is because the person trying to affect change
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has probably been beating their head against a cement wall for quite some time.
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And then all of a sudden the stars align, there's kismet and the wind comes into your
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parachute and lifts you up.
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And then it happens quickly because everyone says, I've been interested about that crazy
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idea for quite some time.
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And now that I see that it's not so crazy, I'm absolutely willing to get in the boat
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and start to row.
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Amazing.
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And I wanted to spend a moment talking about what are the types of things that can be instruments
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of change, like the wind under the parachute and really creates momentum.
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Because I know we've talked privately about the power of insights to essentially bust
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myths in senior management's minds in order to think about a problem differently.
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Can you talk me through some of those things that turn people's heads in an organization
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as change is happening and what actually gives them the confidence to kind of jump off the
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ledge as well and embrace either a new way of working or a new way of a new product?
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I think something that's so, so useful is an executive that allows a group of people,
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however that group of people is chosen and whatever makes sense organizationally, to
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have a little bit of time and space to do some of that work.
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I think of the times in my career where we did kind of the biggest change and a lot of
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it was because we didn't have, let's call it organizational buy-in, but we probably
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had one person that said, listen, you have 90 days.
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I like what you're doing and they would like it for either a revenue opportunity or sometimes
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I found executives who are early in their career and have a lot to prove or are very
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much at the end of their career and don't take the, I want to preserve my legacy and
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I'm going to kind of steer the ship gently into the moonlight.
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People that say, I want to just swing for the fences one last time before I retire.
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They're amazing people.
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When I worked at IBM driving mobile change, those were the sorts of executives that said,
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I am willing because either I feel like I have less to lose by doing something radical
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than I do with maintaining the status quo because I'm either young or not from this
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industry or for whatever reason people are kind of looking at me saying, prove yourselves
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or people very much at the other end of the spectrum that say, perhaps my entire career
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I felt very constrained and now I have three years and I'm going to just do this absolutely
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amazing thing in order that I feel like my legacy was for this innovative thing now that
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I'm at the end of my career.
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And how does it feel to work in that environment where you have this 90 day burning platform?
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I think for people that have had that chance and I think the older I get, the more I realize
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how lucky I was to get those chances, but it's terrifying because there's no like PowerPoint
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to hide behind.
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There's no like monthly metric thing that you can kind of game and say that it was fine.
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It's full on, you're in the spotlight.
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Is this going to go or is this not going to go?
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And if it doesn't go, you kind of own it.
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And so it requires someone that's willing to fail and fail fairly publicly.
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And it also requires an executive to give you that chance.
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But whether you win or lose, the lesson in doing that work is immeasurable for the organization
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and for the people that are allowed to do it.
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And so a lot of what I'm doing now is saying to people at very early stage of that journey,
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not only is it going to pay dividends, so it is going to be a good use of your time,
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you're going to learn a whole heck of a lot that you're not going to learn any other way.
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The school of hard knocks is the best way to earn a PhD because you don't forget those
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lessons.
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And if you were having a conversation with somebody that has a mandate for change or
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to test or pilot a new product, what advice would you give them to keep their head up
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and navigate those kind of potential failures and kind of the, I guess, the natural stresses
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that happen within a team and then within a wider organization?
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I think knowing that it's going to take multiple goes to be successful, and the best advice
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is use unconventional means.
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So if the way in which things work at your company is you go to this tribunal and they
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bless the project and then you get money and you do the thing and you didn't get it going
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that way, I call that the front door.
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So you knocked on the front door.
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The front door did not answer.
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But there's a window, there's a back door, there's maybe a cellar door.
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There's other ways to get climb through the window.
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I've climbed through windows and to try to, and different stakeholders.
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So the stakeholder that you think you need, I mean, maybe you can't get the first go around,
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but there may be other stakeholders who will be super supportive and it might take five
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steps.
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So you might think it's a one step job.
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It might be a five step job.
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And then that's how much do you want to push the idea, right?
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Is the juice worth the squeeze?
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Let me ask you, how important do you think telling the story during a change project
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is or waiting till you've had a win and you can share that win with people?
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Do you have a point of view on those two different approaches?
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My personal belief is the more you can talk about what you're doing as you're doing it
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in a way that's engaging to people, the more useful that energy will be.
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So I'll give you an anecdote.
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Many years ago, we were trying to do work with IBM when I worked at BlackBerry.
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And fundamentally, we thought the bias of IBM was they weren't totally bought into mobility
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as a concept.
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This was maybe 2005.
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So it was more of a nice to have for them and it was an absolute core business for us.
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And as we were explaining what we wanted to do with them, I just looked around and thought,
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I don't actually think we have fundamental agreement on the value of the affordance of
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this technology.
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And if we don't have that, it doesn't matter what we say up here on this stage as tap dancing.
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So it was a very risky thing to do.
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But I think it paid off in dividends later where I kind of said, I'm just going to stop.
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Do we believe that collaboration in the future is going to exist beyond the blue ethernet
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cable?
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And there's this long pause and they all looked at each other and they went, maybe.
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And it was like, in that moment, it's like, okay, so there's not quorum on this.
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It won't matter what our use case is.
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We need to fix the fundamental problem, which is showing them the affordance of this technology,
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which they quickly got.
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It was a time thing too.
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We were a little early.
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They were a little late.
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We didn't really explain it.
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We jumped right to kind of, we want to do this thing on this platform with your IP.
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It was too much too fast for them.
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But over time, we met in the middle.
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And once you get quorum on what the actual fundamental thing you're trying to do is,
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people jump to the use case and they forget, unless you have violent agreement on this
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matters and we should work on this, no one's going to put in the time and effort to get
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to the thing that you want to actually do.
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I think that's such an interesting anecdote and really applicable for any kind of innovation
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and first-of-kind product development practice.
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Because normally when you're having conversations with say, or trying to get by in through the
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front door, potentially you're at the cellar door at this stage, you're so as a team, you're
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so embedded in the topic, you're a few steps ahead of anybody else.
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And I think that's a really great piece of advice to find that way to either meet in
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the middle or this agreement of, not really meet in the middle, but the agreement of there's
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a reason why we're doing this.
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It could be a burning platform, but there is a need and we're in agreement that there's
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a need, this could be an answer.
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Are we going to proceed rather than talk to them about the use cases?
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I think it's interesting to bring that conversation back.
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This podcast is brought to you by Label Sessions, the global platform that connects you to the
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Let me ask you a bit around change and when change is embedded.
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I think that I've noticed a lot in change and transformation agendas that there's a
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real, in the language that's used, there's a real push to have the whole business together.
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And what I mean by that is the whole organization with you at every step of the way and huge
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kind of a company wide initiative.
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So what you said earlier, I thought was really powerful around actually change happens really
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slowly and then happens really fast.
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Is there a, it could be more powerful actually with people leading change agendas to find
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their almost front line and then use them to deliver the first wave of change and then
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address the wider business.
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Like what advice would you give to leaders trying to change a culture of an organization?
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Yeah, I read this analogy the other day about different people in different parts of the
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organization and I think you don't want the whole organization full of people like me.
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It would be chaos every single day.
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So there's people like me in an organization and they're useful in some respects.
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I had a boss that said to me, Lord, you just don't want to water the flowers, do you?
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I said, no, I want to design the flower.
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I want to find the flower.
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I want to figure out the pot for the flower.
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And once the flowers in the pot, like don't trust me ever to remember to water the damn
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thing.
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Someone else will take great pride in making sure that thing is watered on schedule.
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That person is not me.
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And I think in organizations that is also true.
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There are absolutely people who want to run consistent operations and big organizations
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need people like that.
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And we shouldn't punish people that have that orientation because we need them.
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We should let them do the things that they're good at and that they want to do.
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I'll tell you a story.
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When we were doing some of the work at BlackBerry, we had to build a new value proposition for
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this thing that we ultimately got IBM to agree to.
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So you can imagine IBM marketing guidance at that time, BlackBerry marketing guidance,
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massive rule books about what we could and could not do.
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And so I approached this guy to say, you know, I'm not a marketer per se.
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Like I did this thing.
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We have this legal agreement.
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We're going to go to market.
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Like could you work with me and could we figure out what we should say honoring both of these
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value propositions?
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And he just flat out was like, no.
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And I said, sorry, what?
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And he just went, no, that's not my job.
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And I said, oh, okay, you're in marketing.
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This is like a marketing thing we're trying to do.
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And he very like abruptly said, it's not in the guidance though, Anna.
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And I said, well, I know it's not in the guidance because we just made the thing.
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So it couldn't have been in the guidance.
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We made the guidance last year.
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So we didn't know we were going to make this thing.
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We made the guidance.
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And he said, I know, but it's not in the guidance.
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So I basically know.
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And flash forwards, like I ended up doing some of it badly because I'm not a marketer.
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This gentleman's boss called me and said, why are you doing my team's job?
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I kind of gently explained I didn't want to, and I definitely thought there was someone
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better than me to do it.
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And then he quickly realized the resistance of some of his team.
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And I said, listen, it's not for me to kind of call out this guy who did not feel comfortable
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because I really quickly realized I could have pushed or been difficult, but you can't
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make people be creative.
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You can't make people do good work.
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So I'm like, he doesn't want to do this.
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He's scared of this work.
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So it's not going to be good.
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And when he came back around, when the product was successful, wind in the parachute, the
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same guy called me to say, this is now very successful and I'm really interested in it.
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I always have been interested in it.
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And I would love to work with you.
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And so at first I thought, my God, you were so difficult to me.
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But then the older I get, the more I realized he just wasn't ready to get on the bus yet.
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It was too early of a bus stop for him.
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And he wasn't that he didn't like the idea or thought it was stupid.
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It was just too scary for him at the time I asked him.
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I was a little early.
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And I guess that what I have a sense that you operate with a lot of grace to people
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to say, that's fine.
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Well, that wasn't the stop for you.
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Jump on the bus when you're ready.
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Which I think is a really important thing for people leading change to acknowledge that
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your message isn't going to land with everyone at every time.
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And actually you're better to have that front line of people.
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And then it really builds confidence in what's happening.
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But let me ask you something, because I think that people leading change and transformation
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at big organizations are facing sometimes often tension in the business when people
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aren't ready to get on the bus when you have swallowed them too.
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How do you kind of stay motivated and cultivate your wellbeing in that kind of a wider environment?
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Well, I think finding your people, right?
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There's a group of experienced design practitioners inside the company and it's good.
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You need a good vetting session of like, oh my gosh, why is this so difficult?
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So I think that's really useful.
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And I think, again, to your point about grace, I just say this a lot to practitioners to
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say you need to treat the people that you're trying to affect change with, with as much
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empathy as you often have for users.
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We did a session and we had quite a few actuaries and underwriters in it.
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And one of the underwriters kind of said, I'm really interested in all this and what
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you're doing, but it's so different for me.
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And just acknowledging that.
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Like, yeah, in fact, that must be extremely challenging.
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So for someone to be willing to go along for the ride, like that's huge.
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And so just don't kind of react to, oh, this is so different and weird.
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It's like, yeah, for you it is.
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And I totally get that.
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And I'm so appreciative that you kind of put down your reservations and came along for
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the ride because the same person basically said, like, I think this is actually useful.
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I'm just trying to get my head around it, which is a really honest and fair answer.
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The only way you can respond is with empathy to say, like, thank you.
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And at the end, what you really highlight is the importance of the people element in
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respect.
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And I think that was a great point around the empathy.
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You need as much empathy for the people who are, I guess, on the precipice of change as
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you are for the users of potentially an end product.
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I think that's something that people often forget.
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It's like, this is a dick tat.
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It doesn't really work.
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But remember to kind of a stage human and talk to people who are kind of maybe struggling
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with doing things differently.
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Well, and there's lots of reasons for that, right?
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Like they don't understand the change.
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They think the change will negatively affect them.
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They're confused.
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And there's lots of confusing messages in big organizations about change.
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So we shouldn't be surprised that people get confused.
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And change, general change is hard.
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Like in your own life, if there's ways that you live and things you eat and places you
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go, like people kind of like routine.
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The pandemic proved this to all of us.
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All of a sudden, it's like everything you know, you can't do anymore.
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And people freaked out.
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It's like, you can't do that.
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And what do you do when change doesn't go as planned?
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I think the first step I always take is to think about the human reasons why that didn't
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work and not that like that person is difficult and just won't do the thing.
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But like if that person is being difficult, why are they being difficult?
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And I always say to my team, if something is confusing to you, there's like a piece
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of information you don't know.
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So if you can't kind of make sense of a strategy or a position or a tactic or whatever, it
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probably means that there's something that you're just not aware of that is informing
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why they're doing it.
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People are not doing this for no reason.
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You may disagree with the reason, but if you're baffled, it's probably because you're missing
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information.
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So don't make it a personal thing when it's an informational thing.
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Like figure out why and then have a conversation about is this true or not?
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Is it useful or not?
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Like do I agree with it or not?
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But that's secondary to understanding the actual rationale.
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So let me ask you, what tips would you give to other transformation leaders?
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Push harder than you think you can.
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I mean, the worst thing that will happen is you'll get, you know, that was too much, in
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which case you can kind of dial it back.
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But I think inertia is a much bigger danger than kind of too much change.
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The organizations recoil at too much change.
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But I think the thing that can crater them is inertia more than change.
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But figure out how to meet people where they are.
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So I feel like if you're this innovator, design thinker, or experienced design, you live in
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this space, then it kind of behooves you also to think about the person that you're trying
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to affect change with.
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And then because you have the idea that you're trying to get to, but also like the path that
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you have to walk to get there.
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So equal parts on those two trails to say, like, why would this person do it?
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How, like, why is this going to be good for them and their boss?
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What kind of roadblocks are there?
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How can I mitigate some of them as much as the value proposition the users are saying,
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like to dual track it a little bit?
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I mean, what is it about your industry that you love the most?
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I guess change, transformation, and now the insurance world that you inhabit?
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I joined because I thought, my gosh, there's so much work to do.
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Like I love a hairball.
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So this is a big hairball because the industry itself has delegated, for the most part, client
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experience to advisors.
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So we've just by function of our distribution, not being close.
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And so that's changing.
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The whole industry is changing.
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Sun Life's doing lots of amazing things to try to change.
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So we're headed in the right direction, but it is to get it right for people.
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You're getting it right for people at the moment that they need some kind of trustworthy
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thing the very most.
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So keeping people healthy, you know, a loved person dies and it's a horrible time in your
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life.
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Like I can't think of a better thing to try to get right from a client experience perspective.
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If you were going to have an autobiography or a biopic, what would the title of your
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biography be?
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Oh my gosh.
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She was ungovernable.
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I don't know why I'm not working.
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I love that.
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I love that.
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Just went on a hike and like my girlfriend that was up with me was like, sorry, this
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is insane what we're doing.
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It wasn't insane.
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It was so fun.
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It was an astro hike.
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We were three kilometers up to a mountain with an astrophysicist who did an interpretation
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of all the stars in the sky at midnight and then with headlamps and then hiked back down.
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And it was epic.
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I would do it again tomorrow, but it was a little like, I just signed up and I was like,
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this should be fun.
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We learned, I learned about the origin story of the Big Dipper.
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It was magic, but a little crazy.
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Oh, amazing.
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Oh, why aren't you knowing living on the edge?
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Last question.
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On a scale of one to 10, Anna, how weird are you?
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Oh, like nine and a half.
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I'm pretty weird.
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Love it.
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I love it.
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Anna, thank you so much.
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It was amazing to talk to you about how people make change happen, especially when I think
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it's just so exciting because your stories are so rich in the human element.
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And actually I just get a sense that working with you is such a pleasure and you do it
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in such a human way.
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Well, that's so very kind.
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I do try, I think, you know, no one ever said that it was, we didn't have enough humanity
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and there's always room for a bit more, especially these days.
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So try to be kind and make change.
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Like the whole thing is if you really want to make change, you can't do it alone.
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So for everyone that, you know, I spend time talking to executives about, it's not a solitary
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genius saying, aha, it's really teams of people.
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So if you can't foster that in the organization and if people in those teams can't kind of
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radiate that to other people in those groups, I mean, you'll never be successful.
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So it's also self-serving.
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Like if you want to actually do the thing, you kind of have to do this too.
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So concludes Label Sessions Presents.
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Be sure to follow and subscribe to the podcast, no matter your platform.
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And of course, start your journey with us today at labelsessions.com.
