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Strategic Touchpoints
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Kristin Malek: But how do we have these very strategic touchpoints? That could be live events, activations, workshops, trainings. They could be an email, but not those bad emails that actually take that newly formed neural pathway in our brain and actually cement it and created the past. That is actually the least resistant.
Why Change Matters
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Podcast Host: The world is changing for most humans. Change is uncomfortable and challenging to address financial and political uncertainty. Friction with back to office mandates and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget important environmental social responsibility and governance initiatives combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration.
Change is happening and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased [00:01:00] speed to innovation and long lasting change adoption in many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on agile process or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the skillset and need to adapt has never been more vital.
The team from Strategy Table wanna help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management. Helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible, it often starts with a meaningful conversation. This is accessible disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption. Well, we ask challenging questions like how can we design for behavior change and what might be the pathways to get people there? I am Anthony Vay, chief Innovation Officer at Strategy Table, and joining me as always are my co-hosts, [00:02:00] Tahir and Dean, our Chief Experience Officer, and Ryan Hill, our chief operations.
Today we're gonna explore a topic that is near and dear to all three of us.
Meet Dr K
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Tahira Endean: It is near and dear to all of us, but Anthony, we have something unusual today. Usually I get to be the one who introduces the guest and tells how I met them, but today I would love for you to tell us how you met Kristen Malik.
Dr. K.
Anthony Vade: Who is Dr. K to me? Well, I mean, it's a bit blurry, but I think the first time that I met Dr. K was. In a dungeon in Poland,
Kristin Malek: my dad, that sounds so great.
Anthony Vade: That's, that's, that's a, that's a strange place to meet a person. But, you know, we've been through some unique things and the listeners can have whatever images are going through their minds.
Uh, it, it was quite a transformational experience for me at the College of Extraordinary experiences where we were both in the same cohort. Uh, and Dr. K as, as you're affectionately known. Someone who's very forward thinking in the [00:03:00] experience design world, the events world, and in the change management world as associate professor at the university in Nebraska.
And really what I think connected us was this shared love. We realized we knew other people who were interested in this stuff and we'd been experimenting and researching in in this area as well. I, maybe we'll start it that way. Maybe I'll kick it over to Dr. K. Could you give us a bit of an idea when we say designing for behavior change and experience design, what does that even mean in your own words?
Kristin Malek: Yeah, absolutely. I was sitting there when you said like, how did we first meet? I was like, how did we first meet? Because our lives overlap in so many ways, so absolutely.
Designing Behavior Change
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Kristin Malek: When we talk about designing for behavior change, I like to say designing for mindset and behavior change. I started a long time ago in traditional event logistics, and people would spend thousands of dollars to come to these events and then they would leave with great memories, a [00:04:00] great keynote or a great concert or headliner.
But was that experience actually changing their lives? Were they taking that knowledge? Were they taking it back with them, putting it in their work or in their lives and actually living differently? Right. Were they, were they changing? And so that led me on this huge deep dive into how we actually change, which led to like neuroscience and behavioral science and psychology and all of these dorky things that I love so much about how our brains and our bodies actually work.
From things like hypnosis and sound healing and like all of the things, frequencies and everything, and when I talk about designing for behavior change, it really comes down to how do we design for the unconscious mind, the mind, the part of our brains that actually run our lives, our habits and our patterns, and our day-to-day interactions.
That's not just what we're telling ourselves, which lives in the conscious mind.
Tahira Endean: That's [00:05:00] all.
Kristin Malek: That's all. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's in my words. Right?
Tahira Endean: No, I love it. So I think that one of the things, of course, is. We're not usually designing for behavior change. We say that we are like, somebody's spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to bring customers in to take away something that's gonna change them.
And internally, we're working to create sales meetings and kickoff meetings and learning and workshops and all of these things. And then we just deliver some road information and sort of hope for the best. So many ways that we can be doing it better. So I think that it is really, uh, an important differentiation.
Designing for behavior changes is a really a next level piece of it. Yeah. How I look at it as, I always think the leaders of the architects of the organization and as the event designers, we're the engineers who are taking what they want and building it and taking it forward, but we don't always. Take that extra step of what does culture [00:06:00] really mean?
How do I embrace that and then take people on a culture shift?
Kristin Malek: That is such a wonderful question to hear. And I will say that was one of the reasons why I started down this path, right? When I looked at how can I design for behavior change, I started it from a very like event. Driven sector, how can I design my events and how can I measure them to show that they have actually moved the needle and changed mindset and changed behavior?
And what I found over the years is that it wasn't really the event planners and the experienced designers that were contacting me. It was mostly CEOs of small to mid-size companies and the change management professionals. Those are like my top two people that were always reaching out to me because they were the ones that needed to prove change or they had a a vested interest.
They [00:07:00] needed their culture to change. They needed their sales funnels. They needed potential clients to become clients. They needed a lot of things, and it all involved change. Right. And then this other population, the actual experience, designers and event planners and um, course content creators and speakers, they became this secondary market, which was different than what I originally anticipated.
Change vs Behavior Design
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Kristin Malek: But when people come to me and they say, okay, Kristen, this is the change that we are looking for. That's always kind of my first step is to sit there and say like, okay, how many layers is this change? How deep is this change? And how many unconscious barriers to this change? Is this gonna be very, I don't wanna say triggering, but is this gonna have a lot of like neural pathways tied to, um, maybe childhood events or developmental events?
When you look at change management versus behavior change design. There are some significant differences in [00:08:00] mostly in the approaches. When I look at all of my formal change management training, it's a lot of communication, managing resistance. It's a lot of having like a planned and structural approach with my change models and my communication plans and my project management, and making sure that things are a smooth transition.
When I look at behavior change design. I don't like, I'm gonna say a general statement, like top down versus bottom up. It's not actually that, but that's kind of like an easy, easy, I know all my change managers are like, no, we don't do it that way. Um, but from behavior change design, I am looking at like a very.
Human centered. I'm looking at iterative approaches. I'm looking at behavioral insights and design thinking and prototypes and more, uh, designing interventions instead of managing resistance. It's just a little bit of a different approach. It's a little bit of a [00:09:00] different model. When you look at designing these interventions, these experiences, these communications say I'm, I was hired to change behavior in terms of internal culture.
So this happens a lot with mergers and acquisitions, right? Like m and As, and we're sitting there, okay, we're bringing these two companies together. How can we make sure that this is a really great. Internal environment and we're all on the same page, right? So to look at that flow and to say, okay, what actually needs a live experience?
What can be done via email? A well written, well designed email. Um, what is small group meetings? What are focus groups? What are large events? Um, looking at the flow, looking at flow is so important in everything. And making sure that we have this because it's a, a checklist item, but how do we design this?
What are we saying? What's the correct order? I say correct. Right. It's not binary, but what, what [00:10:00] does that look like altogether in the small pieces and the big piece? There's a lot of tools, a lot of models, a lot of different frameworks and structures that come into it, depending on the behavior that, that we're looking at.
And that's why it is so difficult sometimes when people ask me that question with the tools. 'cause I'm like, well, it depends on the behavior, right? I can get a a pretty. Um, conservative, closed-minded group that's against AI into being open-minded and neutral about ai. Even creating like a Chad two PT account in a one hour keynote.
That's pretty easy the way that we structure the flow of that, and I have proof of that, you know, tangible data. Over and over and over again. But if you're trying to look at a whole culture shift, right, that's not gonna happen in a one hour keynote. So the tools just become different depending on the actual change that you're looking at.
Anthony Vade: We can build on that for sure.
Ryan Hill: Yeah. Actually, I got several questions queued up that kind of touch on things that you uh, mentioned [00:11:00] already. So I think it's interesting how you pointed out, okay, we approach the behavior transformation differently than change management and as someone that dabbs in both.
From an interest standpoint, but not academically. I always look at those things as inseparable, right? If we're looking at a long-term change initiative, like there's gonna have to be associated behavioral changes that go along with that at multiple levels of an organization. I always like using the Bridges model for change management, where you have that neutral zone and that's where a lot of great initiatives and ideas go to die because we lose the momentum, we lose the steam, or like the initial crew that was resistant instead of coming on board, we fail on the behavior change.
They just leave the company. And so we're unable to achieve the outcome that we want.
Sustaining Momentum PATH
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Ryan Hill: Long intro to the question of after we get that initial hike done, after we, we build the momentum. How do we sustain that momentum long term, especially when it, it does get challenging. Along the way, how do we keep the enthusiasm or the momentum or [00:12:00] the vision going through those periods of change?
Kristin Malek: This is such an interesting one because this varies so drastically depending on the size of the organization, right? If you have a large organization like thousands and thousands of employees, all the, the processes and the models and the research has shown it could take 10 years to institutionalize an idea.
What's most fascinating, and I'm sure, Ryan, you already know this. Is when McKinsey and Company came out with their own research that said like over 90% of change management products or projects that they have actually like done have been failures within five or 10 years. This is just a really fascinating study by a company who does strategy to just come out and be like, Hey, this change management thing, it's, it doesn't always work the way that.
That we've intended for it to work, right? So I would definitely say the approach changes depending on the size of the organization for sure. A hundred percent. More than a hundred percent. So I do have a [00:13:00] book. I know that I'm, I'm like not a self-promotional person. I have taken a lot of different frameworks from different industries and I've created it into my own model.
It's called path. And so P is perceived, A is a line in design, T is take action, and H is hold. And the things that you're talking about are always in hold and they're always the things that are missed. If they're not missed, they're not necessarily done super effectively or not long enough for it to actually concrete those neural pathways.
So if we've accurately identified the change and done all the things, and we've aligned our processes and we've designed everything for that change, right? Then we take action on it in those small, manageable steps, which we love and change management, then we have the hold. And the hold is making sure that we have not just like follow up.
Not those super annoying once a week reflection emails, Hey, now that our thing is done, have you thought about this? [00:14:00] Or have you done this? Right? But how do we have these very strategic touchpoints? That could be live events, activations, workshops, trainings. They could be an email, but not those bad emails that actually take that newly formed.
Neural pathway in our brain and actually cement it and build walls. So we've created the path that is actually the least resistant 'cause our brain will naturally go to the path of least resistance. That's how we are hardwired to operate, and we have to make that new path easier than the old path was, which is a little counterintuitive in today's world of UX where we try to make everything as easy as possible, right?
Sometimes you wanna add barriers and are we adding barriers in the right places? To convince us to go over to this new path.
Ryan Hill: It's very validating to hear. I think that's one of the things that we all at Strategy Table really appreciate is that we don't like the checklist approach to change management.
And I think that's why other larger [00:15:00] consultancies fail at it is because they, they come in with this like recipe book, but they don't even know what the ingredients are that they're working with at the time. What are the layers behind the behavior? What's driving the change? Is it something like a merger or is it, you know, trying to adopt a new target market?
There's a lot of variables and if you come in with just a set recipe and you say, this is how change happens, I think you're, you're dooming yourself from the start unless you have, you know, a clientele leadership team that is tremendously dedicated to success in that implementation process. One of the things that I was wondering is when you are creating those barriers or you're trying to get that reinforcing behavior, how do you.
Use things like environmental triggers that help propel that along.
Values Drive Change
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Kristin Malek: I'm gonna answer your question, but I'm gonna add this incredible, amazing thing that needs to be clarified. 'cause I think it would help the change management field in general if we just understood this. And I think it's one of those things that everybody [00:16:00] understands is super, super important.
We know it's important and we don't necessarily, um. Approach it the right way, and that is values. So when we talk about values, there's a lot of really smart people in a lot of really powerful positions who have heard that, hey, values are the key to driving change. And there's a lot of brain science behind this, right?
Like values live in the unconscious. You set your goals in your conscious brain, your 5%. But you get your goals. So goal setter, goal getter. So you get your goals in your unconscious brain, 95%. And even though a lot of things can impact that, the one thing that's been shown in common for all of them is alignment with values.
So everybody everywhere is talking about values. We're a values based organization. They have some committee that's closed in some room and they decide what their values are and they spend way too long, like changing the commas and doing the things. And then they like unveil some strategic plan and they're like, these are our values and everyone [00:17:00] must know them, and that's where we get it wrong.
Anthony Vade: Mm-hmm.
Kristin Malek: It's because you can't tell people what their values are. Right. As a company, you can have values. But one of the things that I do in behavior change design, when I come into a company. Is I do a values solicitation, and this is per person individually, and this is also where I would say I get my money because a lot of people misunderstand like the values, they'll give everyone this preset.
Deck of 40 value cards and they'll be like, what are the values in your life? And like, organize it around. It's very therapeutic. And, and they're like, these are my values. Like I am a family person and I'm like a, you know, spiritual person, whatever. But understanding that we have these categories, like this Wheel of Life, and you can Google Wheel of Life, right?
So you have. These six core categories for the wheel of life. You have family and spirituality, personal growth, health and wellbeing. You have [00:18:00] these categories and where I think the mismatches is a lot of people are like, what are your values? And you think you have one set of guiding values for your life and.
And that's wrong. You have a set of values in each area of your life, right? So what guides me as a mom to a 10-year-old versus what guides me as an entrepreneur who's trying to support my family are very different values, right? They're very different. And to take that even further, so I was just doing this for a company.
Um, last week I was onsite. I had a four hour workshop and we were listening to the values of their executive teams. There was 10 or 12 people in there. And I asked them, I was like, what is important to you about your career? And we like elicited the values for the career, but then to change that question to what's important to you about working at x, y, Z company?
And we elicited the values very specific to their company. And then I [00:19:00] could hold them up and be like, this is where the mismatch is because your values for your career. Are different than your values for working at this company. So if for me, if I'm the CEO of this company who's trying to enact all this change, like I have to align to the values that people feel working for my company, which is just.
So much more specific. So then everybody gets segmented, and then we have targeted campaigns that go for each of the people. We approach things in a, in a different way when we're talking to different people, but we can also change values as well. Change mindset, behavior. We can change those values so that way.
Everybody's values can align for their job. That doesn't change the values in their life, right? And so when we talk about like tools in the toolbox, we talk about like really how to get there. That is what I'm doing with almost every single company is eliciting the right sets of [00:20:00] values. And then how can we change those values?
How do we use those values to get the change desired? And that's the real power. I think that's why over 95% of my change campaigns have been successful even five years after, because it's all very specific value driven to individuals, unconscious minds, versus having it a little bit more change or ambiguous or process oriented, which is, and that 5% is.
As you would know, Ryan, it's leadership changes, right? A leader comes in, they're like, this is what we're doing. And then midway through your campaign, another leader comes in and they're like, ah, just kidding. This has to be my plan. So now I am gonna do my own strategic plan, and I'm gonna do it this way.
And then it fails, right? And the larger your organization, the more likely that is to happen along the way.
Anthony Vade: So it always keeps coming back to values. So often in these episodes that we have, shout out to David Allison, who was featured in season one. Uh, you can go and listen to that episode after [00:21:00] you've completed listening to this episode.
Of course, we deep dive in that difference between individual values and organizational values as well, and the risk we fall into of. Making our organizational values so vague that they sound like a horoscope that could apply to everybody just 'cause we think that's gonna create the behavior that we want to see.
Break and Recap
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Anthony Vade: We are gonna need to take a really short break here at this point. Uh, certainly gonna come back and I wanna unpack this a little bit more with you and understand how change can occur as a deeply human centered, experienced based journey as well. 'cause I think there's something that's come up through this.
You talk about path. Our company's name is Strategy Table Pathways. Although we just call it Strategy Table. We dunno what that's all about, but we believe that this journey is an important part. And actually curating what that change journey looks like, uh, is very, very vital. I'd love to hear your perspectives on that, but of course, a very quick break in will be right back.[00:22:00]
Okay, we're back. So what we talked about in the first half was really looking at this idea of designing for change and behavior change over time. And you shared it was really interesting that there were these. Traditional communication touchpoints. Some might be a big live experience in person where the CEO's connecting with the people within the organization and inspiring change through a one-off special experience.
Sometimes it's just an email that might be good or bad, and. It tends to happen over an extended period of time. Like you said, five years, 10 years, maybe institutional change will take 30 years. How much control and how aware do people responsible for change need to be of that reality of a journey? And how can they better design a journey or at least understand the kind of journey they need to take people on to really make behavior change happen?
Identity and Motivation
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Kristin Malek: And that's so deep, and we can get so [00:23:00] philosophical. When I am talking to leaders, prospective clients, existing clients, and they're coming to me and they're like, okay, this is the change that we're looking at. This is the change that's required. No, I'm built into a lot of really weird industries and a lot of like really cool things.
I'm on like a health equity over here. I'm on a microplastics, nanoplastics social activation over here. I'm on like this drug activation thing over here, right? So lots of, lots of different, um, really, really cool and impactful things. And when I'm talking about designing a journey or designing touchpoints, so much of it.
We talked about values. Before the break, and I would be remiss to not talk about the actual core thing of change, which is identity. You have a sense of identity, and when you change that identity also changes. So values are a level, and identity is the root of [00:24:00] everything, right? It's the seed of everything.
When we're talking about change and the journey, it depends on how different your current identity and your desired. Or even your company's desired identity is. Right. And I like to think of that, and I do talk about this in the book, as away from versus towards motivation. You can't sit there and uh, be.
Broke living paycheck to paycheck and look in the mirror and say, I'm a millionaire, and all the manifestation people are like, you need to keep saying it, but it's so outside the realm of possibility. Your brain's never gonna get there because you're living paycheck to paycheck. So the further away you are.
From your desired identity, we have to get you to neutral, which Ryan, um, briefly talked about as well. Like, we try to get people to neutral and then how can we get them to their [00:25:00] desired identity? How can we get them from broke living paycheck to paycheck, to having a thousand dollars in their savings to then like actually being a millionaire?
And so depending on the differences of where those are, if they're actively against it, right? So I always like to take a controversial topic here. So if you think politics or you think gun control, or you think anything that's like super, super controversial, if you're wanting people to be on one side.
Depending on where they're starting with, right? If they're super against the other side, it's gonna take them a while to get to neutral and then to positive. But if they're already neutral, they're like, oh, I don't really care this. It's much easier to get them. The other thing that we're constantly fighting with is apathy.
Our brains, our world, it's super overwhelming right now. That's why we're all doom scrolling at night and like trying to turn off our brain, which just makes it worse. Okay? So we're very apathetic about a lot of things. [00:26:00] And to get people to care to then have the change is also a different design problem.
That I love. I love design problems, and so I would say, Anthony, for your question, it's a lot of educating the leaders of what that journey would look like, right? That's the long answer. Okay. It's not a set three month, some changes. Again, you could do it a one hour keynote, some changes. Could be a three month campaign, some could be a year long campaign.
If I'm trying to change all of higher education across all of the state that I'm in or the country that I'm in, I mean, that's gonna be like a, a 10 year change with a lot of people listening to me. So, so there's that.
Anthony Vade: What I also heard there is this tremendous opportunity to think about the journey with a bit of a layered approach.
That there will be those who are on board with the first keynote, uh, and then there'll be those that will need three years to really buy in and really adopt the right [00:27:00] behaviors that we want to see. And there's this potential that that person who bought into the keynote and that first presentation could actually become the advocate.
The influence, the positive tool that you can have to help bring that other person along on that journey. And we so often do a one size fits all for the organization. Well, we'll just run this campaign and we fail to go, what does this campaign mean to the different individuals experiencing it? And we can get a bit more granular and I think we increase our chances of of success.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Teach Everyone
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Kristin Malek: This is so, so prevalent right now in anything education. So whether you're in a traditional like college or K through 12, whether you're in a workshop or a a speaker or you're doing a corporate program or anything. This thought process that we're teaching to the middle, oh my gosh, kill me.
Like, uh, we cannot teach to the middle. You have to start with the lowest person in the room, and you have [00:28:00] to, you have to take everybody along in the journey with you. When I do speaker trainings, I'm like, you have to start. With the very elementary spot, and they're like, but I only have 45 minutes. I only have 30 minutes.
Right? I only have 20 minutes. And if you don't start at the beginning and pick people up quickly along the way, you've already lost half the room. Right? You can't have effective change for an organization. For a community, even for an individual, if you're not met where you are. So when I give AI talks, artificial intelligence talks, I have that opening question of, okay, hold up on your hands from one to 10, tell me your comfort level with it.
But I always start my first slide with what is artificial intelligence? For those of you in the room that don't know, this is how I explain it in simple terms. And for everybody else, like. Cool. We're getting there. Uh, but I will always take those three to five minutes to start at the basics. 'cause otherwise you've lost everybody.
You have to design a journey, [00:29:00] not a where is the median or mean average point in the room that I'm talking to and that I think is missed so often
Neurobiology and Barriers
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Anthony Vade: I like as well, that you touch on the discomfort that somebody not knowing. What they're going through or not fully understanding the scenario that they're in can cause them to shut down at that point.
It's, and then you previously were mentioning the environmental elements as well, and we start to get into some of the neurobiology of things. There was a concerning study out of Princeton that looked at, uh, the effect on the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to predict. And envision potential futures, uh, for people who were under stress regularly in a state of trauma.
And in particular, if they were under financial stress for an extended period of time, they, they lost the ability to, like you said, empathize, uh, and to even see a potential future or, or a hope for the future as well. And what that led them to was making a whole bunch of really bad life choices generally.
[00:30:00] Continued this vicious cycle that we have. And I wonder maybe you have a perspective on this, do organizations and teams suffer from the same sort of scenario, do you think, where we get into these water seas, these spirals declining spirals of, of losing our empathy instead of stopping and pumping the brakes to think more deeply about, okay, how we emotionally, how we neurobiologically, how do we even start that kind of conversation?
Kristin Malek: When I come in, the very first thing that I do always, and I even write it in the book, is that it does not even matter what you contact me for. It doesn't matter. I will always start with the three things I wish I knew about our brain earlier in life. Always doesn't matter. The topic of the keynote doesn't matter.
The group I'm talking to, doesn't matter if it's a book, my own book, other people's like, doesn't matter. I will always start with the three things I wish I knew about our brain earlier, and it's super disruptive. It gets people to lean in. It gives people in that what's in it for me. It also [00:31:00] opens up the mind because once people become aware of like, oh, I have filters in my brain, like, oh, what am I filtering out then no matter what I'm saying after that.
They're more open-minded about it because they're understanding how their brain works. So I have never personally being who I am, I've never personally got into a room and had tons and tons of pushback because of the flow and the setup of what I do with my things. And that's what I'm teaching in facilitator training and speaker training is like the flow and decreasing all the barriers.
Is super, super important, and that's so critical to everything because the minute their barriers go up, the minute you say a controversial statement, and they cross their arms and they lean back, they're not listening to anymore, they don't care anymore. How can you get them at the beginning? People love to say a controversial topic or try to seek agreement, but again, you're not catching everybody.
Right. Because of the way that I start, everything that I do, it [00:32:00] applies to literally every single person in the room. So then they all lean forward. 'cause everybody has a human brain. And if you do not have a human brain, you're not listening to me, right? 'cause you're dead. So everybody has a human brain and so it is just something that like brings us all together, but also opens up their minds a lot.
I also do have a rule which helps Anthony in this part, if I'm dealing with an executive leadership team. In my contract, I will say, if you do not have a hundred percent attendance when I show up, we will reschedule. If I've got the executive team and you guys are driving direction to everybody, a hundred percent attendance.
And I have definitely gone into a room and been like, okay, we're rescheduling. 'cause not everybody's here and they've gotta all be on the same page with it. Right. And I know a lot of facilitators who. Who don't necessarily feel strong enough or stick to it, that everybody has to be there, and that's also a big problem too.
Calls to Action
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Anthony Vade: So as is our tradition, we end every episode of accessible [00:33:00] disruption with a simple call to action. What can listeners do to create positive change in their worlds? Uh, we're gonna come to you last, Kristen, of course. But I want to hit with Ryan first. Have you got one for us? What's your call to action for this episode?
Ryan Hill: Uh, I'm gonna go back to my first few questions. Uh, I really appreciated the idea. Think about your personal values and then levying that against what you value about working where you work, where the organization you work for, but looking at that disparity, and I think that's a really interesting tool that we should all do periodically just to make sure that we're, I think, in sync with our needs and our actions and our words, our beliefs.
So I, that's my call to action. I think. Sit down and do that. Put your own values and look. Values you see at work and see what the gaps are.
Anthony Vade: Tahir, what's your code to action?
Tahira Endean: Well, based on this, I'm gonna say avoid the messy middle start at the beginning, work to the top. It's, it's a trap we often fall into, and if we can get past [00:34:00] that.
And set people up so that they can lean in, move them through the middle, and get them on a path to behavior change, then that's where we're succeeding. So thank you for framing that so beautifully, Kristen.
Anthony Vade: Yeah. Kristen, I'm gonna give you the opportunity to share your, uh, final call to action. Uh, I feel like we could have talked, like I said at the beginning for a 3, 4, 5 hour marathon here.
So we'll have to have you back on a future episode to dissect this a little bit more. But what's your little bite-sized takeaway that you. Think will empower our listeners to, uh, take these brilliant ideas, these brilliant concepts, and create massive action with them.
Kristin Malek: Absolutely. I have a great one and.
I'm not the host, but I'm gonna say, Anthony, I'm not gonna answer until you answer
Anthony Vade: my call to action would be Okay. Here you go. You are not comfortable being a self-promoter, so I'm gonna say pick up a copy of Kristen's book so you can really dig into this topic in a meaningful way. And my real call to action, aside from getting the book, which you should do [00:35:00] anyway after this conversation 'cause it's.
Been so insightful. We want you to share your experience with the book, with our Strategy table community as well. 'cause it's gonna be on our bookshelf very soon. And we want to spark a dialogue around not only this episode of the podcast, but also the book as well. And guess what? Links in the description of this episode.
Pick up Kristen's book. There you go. Is that enough for you? Can you, can we have your,
Kristin Malek: but I mean, thanks.
My biggest call to action, and it's an interesting one that we haven't touched on a whole lot, but my biggest call to action is anytime you feel activated, I like to say activated because it's not just when you feel negative, it's also when you feel positive, right? Anytime you feel outside of your neutral middle zone.
You feel activated, just get curious about it and curiosity about, oh, that's interesting. I'm curious [00:36:00] why I responded that way. That was interesting. Right? Just curiosity is a very magical state of being and getting curious about your personal activations. Can really unravel a lot of the filters and lenses in your brain that you don't even know were there because they were formed a long, long time ago when you were children, right?
Didn't even know you were creating filters, and now you're living with them. So if that didn't make sense, then you'll have to read the book and hear me on a future episodes.
Anthony Vade: No, it, it made such beautiful sense. It really did.
Wrap Up and Subscribe
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Anthony Vade: So of course, all the listeners out there, you're gonna have to subscribe, like, share, and follow accessible disruption to hear future episodes with our great.
Guests and Dr. K of course, we want you to head over to strategy table.co. Sign up for your seat at the table where you can hear extended versions of our podcast, ad free listening. Join our table community where we have a bookshelf, where we explore [00:37:00] amazing books like Dr. K's. Of course, there's our little chat community in the back end there too, where we share some of the experiments we're doing, some of the prototyping.
We'd love you to have a seat at the table with us. So head on over to strategy table.co. But for now. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Accessible Disruption.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahir and Dean Ryan Hill and Anthony Vade. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Podcast production by experience design changing. An association with the change lead network. Find more information@strategytable.co.
[00:00:00]
Strategic Touchpoints
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Kristin Malek: But how do we have these very strategic touchpoints? That could be live events, activations, workshops, trainings. They could be an email, but not those bad emails that actually take that newly formed neural pathway in our brain and actually cement it and created the past. That is actually the least resistant.
Why Change Matters
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Podcast Host: The world is changing for most humans. Change is uncomfortable and challenging to address financial and political uncertainty. Friction with back to office mandates and challenging hybrid workplace collaboration. Not to forget important environmental social responsibility and governance initiatives combined with the rapid pace of digital transformation and the need for human-centered AI integration.
Change is happening and fast. This rapid change has highlighted the need for increased [00:01:00] speed to innovation and long lasting change adoption in many organizations. Whether you are a startup working on agile process or a mature organization, navigating change within existing complex structures, the skillset and need to adapt has never been more vital.
The team from Strategy Table wanna help the wider world understand the need and approach to meaningful and impactful change management. Helping organizations navigate disruption and make change accessible, it often starts with a meaningful conversation. This is accessible disruption.
Anthony Vade: Welcome to another episode of Accessible Disruption. Well, we ask challenging questions like how can we design for behavior change and what might be the pathways to get people there? I am Anthony Vay, chief Innovation Officer at Strategy Table, and joining me as always are my co-hosts, [00:02:00] Tahir and Dean, our Chief Experience Officer, and Ryan Hill, our chief operations.
Today we're gonna explore a topic that is near and dear to all three of us.
Meet Dr K
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Tahira Endean: It is near and dear to all of us, but Anthony, we have something unusual today. Usually I get to be the one who introduces the guest and tells how I met them, but today I would love for you to tell us how you met Kristen Malik.
Dr. K.
Anthony Vade: Who is Dr. K to me? Well, I mean, it's a bit blurry, but I think the first time that I met Dr. K was. In a dungeon in Poland,
Kristin Malek: my dad, that sounds so great.
Anthony Vade: That's, that's, that's a, that's a strange place to meet a person. But, you know, we've been through some unique things and the listeners can have whatever images are going through their minds.
Uh, it, it was quite a transformational experience for me at the College of Extraordinary experiences where we were both in the same cohort. Uh, and Dr. K as, as you're affectionately known. Someone who's very forward thinking in the [00:03:00] experience design world, the events world, and in the change management world as associate professor at the university in Nebraska.
And really what I think connected us was this shared love. We realized we knew other people who were interested in this stuff and we'd been experimenting and researching in in this area as well. I, maybe we'll start it that way. Maybe I'll kick it over to Dr. K. Could you give us a bit of an idea when we say designing for behavior change and experience design, what does that even mean in your own words?
Kristin Malek: Yeah, absolutely. I was sitting there when you said like, how did we first meet? I was like, how did we first meet? Because our lives overlap in so many ways, so absolutely.
Designing Behavior Change
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Kristin Malek: When we talk about designing for behavior change, I like to say designing for mindset and behavior change. I started a long time ago in traditional event logistics, and people would spend thousands of dollars to come to these events and then they would leave with great memories, a [00:04:00] great keynote or a great concert or headliner.
But was that experience actually changing their lives? Were they taking that knowledge? Were they taking it back with them, putting it in their work or in their lives and actually living differently? Right. Were they, were they changing? And so that led me on this huge deep dive into how we actually change, which led to like neuroscience and behavioral science and psychology and all of these dorky things that I love so much about how our brains and our bodies actually work.
From things like hypnosis and sound healing and like all of the things, frequencies and everything, and when I talk about designing for behavior change, it really comes down to how do we design for the unconscious mind, the mind, the part of our brains that actually run our lives, our habits and our patterns, and our day-to-day interactions.
That's not just what we're telling ourselves, which lives in the conscious mind.
Tahira Endean: That's [00:05:00] all.
Kristin Malek: That's all. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's in my words. Right?
Tahira Endean: No, I love it. So I think that one of the things, of course, is. We're not usually designing for behavior change. We say that we are like, somebody's spending millions and millions and millions of dollars to bring customers in to take away something that's gonna change them.
And internally, we're working to create sales meetings and kickoff meetings and learning and workshops and all of these things. And then we just deliver some road information and sort of hope for the best. So many ways that we can be doing it better. So I think that it is really, uh, an important differentiation.
Designing for behavior changes is a really a next level piece of it. Yeah. How I look at it as, I always think the leaders of the architects of the organization and as the event designers, we're the engineers who are taking what they want and building it and taking it forward, but we don't always. Take that extra step of what does culture [00:06:00] really mean?
How do I embrace that and then take people on a culture shift?
Kristin Malek: That is such a wonderful question to hear. And I will say that was one of the reasons why I started down this path, right? When I looked at how can I design for behavior change, I started it from a very like event. Driven sector, how can I design my events and how can I measure them to show that they have actually moved the needle and changed mindset and changed behavior?
And what I found over the years is that it wasn't really the event planners and the experienced designers that were contacting me. It was mostly CEOs of small to mid-size companies and the change management professionals. Those are like my top two people that were always reaching out to me because they were the ones that needed to prove change or they had a a vested interest.
They [00:07:00] needed their culture to change. They needed their sales funnels. They needed potential clients to become clients. They needed a lot of things, and it all involved change. Right. And then this other population, the actual experience, designers and event planners and um, course content creators and speakers, they became this secondary market, which was different than what I originally anticipated.
Change vs Behavior Design
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Kristin Malek: But when people come to me and they say, okay, Kristen, this is the change that we are looking for. That's always kind of my first step is to sit there and say like, okay, how many layers is this change? How deep is this change? And how many unconscious barriers to this change? Is this gonna be very, I don't wanna say triggering, but is this gonna have a lot of like neural pathways tied to, um, maybe childhood events or developmental events?
When you look at change management versus behavior change design. There are some significant differences in [00:08:00] mostly in the approaches. When I look at all of my formal change management training, it's a lot of communication, managing resistance. It's a lot of having like a planned and structural approach with my change models and my communication plans and my project management, and making sure that things are a smooth transition.
When I look at behavior change design. I don't like, I'm gonna say a general statement, like top down versus bottom up. It's not actually that, but that's kind of like an easy, easy, I know all my change managers are like, no, we don't do it that way. Um, but from behavior change design, I am looking at like a very.
Human centered. I'm looking at iterative approaches. I'm looking at behavioral insights and design thinking and prototypes and more, uh, designing interventions instead of managing resistance. It's just a little bit of a different approach. It's a little bit of a [00:09:00] different model. When you look at designing these interventions, these experiences, these communications say I'm, I was hired to change behavior in terms of internal culture.
So this happens a lot with mergers and acquisitions, right? Like m and As, and we're sitting there, okay, we're bringing these two companies together. How can we make sure that this is a really great. Internal environment and we're all on the same page, right? So to look at that flow and to say, okay, what actually needs a live experience?
What can be done via email? A well written, well designed email. Um, what is small group meetings? What are focus groups? What are large events? Um, looking at the flow, looking at flow is so important in everything. And making sure that we have this because it's a, a checklist item, but how do we design this?
What are we saying? What's the correct order? I say correct. Right. It's not binary, but what, what [00:10:00] does that look like altogether in the small pieces and the big piece? There's a lot of tools, a lot of models, a lot of different frameworks and structures that come into it, depending on the behavior that, that we're looking at.
And that's why it is so difficult sometimes when people ask me that question with the tools. 'cause I'm like, well, it depends on the behavior, right? I can get a a pretty. Um, conservative, closed-minded group that's against AI into being open-minded and neutral about ai. Even creating like a Chad two PT account in a one hour keynote.
That's pretty easy the way that we structure the flow of that, and I have proof of that, you know, tangible data. Over and over and over again. But if you're trying to look at a whole culture shift, right, that's not gonna happen in a one hour keynote. So the tools just become different depending on the actual change that you're looking at.
Anthony Vade: We can build on that for sure.
Ryan Hill: Yeah. Actually, I got several questions queued up that kind of touch on things that you uh, mentioned [00:11:00] already. So I think it's interesting how you pointed out, okay, we approach the behavior transformation differently than change management and as someone that dabbs in both.
From an interest standpoint, but not academically. I always look at those things as inseparable, right? If we're looking at a long-term change initiative, like there's gonna have to be associated behavioral changes that go along with that at multiple levels of an organization. I always like using the Bridges model for change management, where you have that neutral zone and that's where a lot of great initiatives and ideas go to die because we lose the momentum, we lose the steam, or like the initial crew that was resistant instead of coming on board, we fail on the behavior change.
They just leave the company. And so we're unable to achieve the outcome that we want.
Sustaining Momentum PATH
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Ryan Hill: Long intro to the question of after we get that initial hike done, after we, we build the momentum. How do we sustain that momentum long term, especially when it, it does get challenging. Along the way, how do we keep the enthusiasm or the momentum or [00:12:00] the vision going through those periods of change?
Kristin Malek: This is such an interesting one because this varies so drastically depending on the size of the organization, right? If you have a large organization like thousands and thousands of employees, all the, the processes and the models and the research has shown it could take 10 years to institutionalize an idea.
What's most fascinating, and I'm sure, Ryan, you already know this. Is when McKinsey and Company came out with their own research that said like over 90% of change management products or projects that they have actually like done have been failures within five or 10 years. This is just a really fascinating study by a company who does strategy to just come out and be like, Hey, this change management thing, it's, it doesn't always work the way that.
That we've intended for it to work, right? So I would definitely say the approach changes depending on the size of the organization for sure. A hundred percent. More than a hundred percent. So I do have a [00:13:00] book. I know that I'm, I'm like not a self-promotional person. I have taken a lot of different frameworks from different industries and I've created it into my own model.
It's called path. And so P is perceived, A is a line in design, T is take action, and H is hold. And the things that you're talking about are always in hold and they're always the things that are missed. If they're not missed, they're not necessarily done super effectively or not long enough for it to actually concrete those neural pathways.
So if we've accurately identified the change and done all the things, and we've aligned our processes and we've designed everything for that change, right? Then we take action on it in those small, manageable steps, which we love and change management, then we have the hold. And the hold is making sure that we have not just like follow up.
Not those super annoying once a week reflection emails, Hey, now that our thing is done, have you thought about this? [00:14:00] Or have you done this? Right? But how do we have these very strategic touchpoints? That could be live events, activations, workshops, trainings. They could be an email, but not those bad emails that actually take that newly formed.
Neural pathway in our brain and actually cement it and build walls. So we've created the path that is actually the least resistant 'cause our brain will naturally go to the path of least resistance. That's how we are hardwired to operate, and we have to make that new path easier than the old path was, which is a little counterintuitive in today's world of UX where we try to make everything as easy as possible, right?
Sometimes you wanna add barriers and are we adding barriers in the right places? To convince us to go over to this new path.
Ryan Hill: It's very validating to hear. I think that's one of the things that we all at Strategy Table really appreciate is that we don't like the checklist approach to change management.
And I think that's why other larger [00:15:00] consultancies fail at it is because they, they come in with this like recipe book, but they don't even know what the ingredients are that they're working with at the time. What are the layers behind the behavior? What's driving the change? Is it something like a merger or is it, you know, trying to adopt a new target market?
There's a lot of variables and if you come in with just a set recipe and you say, this is how change happens, I think you're, you're dooming yourself from the start unless you have, you know, a clientele leadership team that is tremendously dedicated to success in that implementation process. One of the things that I was wondering is when you are creating those barriers or you're trying to get that reinforcing behavior, how do you.
Use things like environmental triggers that help propel that along.
Values Drive Change
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Kristin Malek: I'm gonna answer your question, but I'm gonna add this incredible, amazing thing that needs to be clarified. 'cause I think it would help the change management field in general if we just understood this. And I think it's one of those things that everybody [00:16:00] understands is super, super important.
We know it's important and we don't necessarily, um. Approach it the right way, and that is values. So when we talk about values, there's a lot of really smart people in a lot of really powerful positions who have heard that, hey, values are the key to driving change. And there's a lot of brain science behind this, right?
Like values live in the unconscious. You set your goals in your conscious brain, your 5%. But you get your goals. So goal setter, goal getter. So you get your goals in your unconscious brain, 95%. And even though a lot of things can impact that, the one thing that's been shown in common for all of them is alignment with values.
So everybody everywhere is talking about values. We're a values based organization. They have some committee that's closed in some room and they decide what their values are and they spend way too long, like changing the commas and doing the things. And then they like unveil some strategic plan and they're like, these are our values and everyone [00:17:00] must know them, and that's where we get it wrong.
Anthony Vade: Mm-hmm.
Kristin Malek: It's because you can't tell people what their values are. Right. As a company, you can have values. But one of the things that I do in behavior change design, when I come into a company. Is I do a values solicitation, and this is per person individually, and this is also where I would say I get my money because a lot of people misunderstand like the values, they'll give everyone this preset.
Deck of 40 value cards and they'll be like, what are the values in your life? And like, organize it around. It's very therapeutic. And, and they're like, these are my values. Like I am a family person and I'm like a, you know, spiritual person, whatever. But understanding that we have these categories, like this Wheel of Life, and you can Google Wheel of Life, right?
So you have. These six core categories for the wheel of life. You have family and spirituality, personal growth, health and wellbeing. You have [00:18:00] these categories and where I think the mismatches is a lot of people are like, what are your values? And you think you have one set of guiding values for your life and.
And that's wrong. You have a set of values in each area of your life, right? So what guides me as a mom to a 10-year-old versus what guides me as an entrepreneur who's trying to support my family are very different values, right? They're very different. And to take that even further, so I was just doing this for a company.
Um, last week I was onsite. I had a four hour workshop and we were listening to the values of their executive teams. There was 10 or 12 people in there. And I asked them, I was like, what is important to you about your career? And we like elicited the values for the career, but then to change that question to what's important to you about working at x, y, Z company?
And we elicited the values very specific to their company. And then I [00:19:00] could hold them up and be like, this is where the mismatch is because your values for your career. Are different than your values for working at this company. So if for me, if I'm the CEO of this company who's trying to enact all this change, like I have to align to the values that people feel working for my company, which is just.
So much more specific. So then everybody gets segmented, and then we have targeted campaigns that go for each of the people. We approach things in a, in a different way when we're talking to different people, but we can also change values as well. Change mindset, behavior. We can change those values so that way.
Everybody's values can align for their job. That doesn't change the values in their life, right? And so when we talk about like tools in the toolbox, we talk about like really how to get there. That is what I'm doing with almost every single company is eliciting the right sets of [00:20:00] values. And then how can we change those values?
How do we use those values to get the change desired? And that's the real power. I think that's why over 95% of my change campaigns have been successful even five years after, because it's all very specific value driven to individuals, unconscious minds, versus having it a little bit more change or ambiguous or process oriented, which is, and that 5% is.
As you would know, Ryan, it's leadership changes, right? A leader comes in, they're like, this is what we're doing. And then midway through your campaign, another leader comes in and they're like, ah, just kidding. This has to be my plan. So now I am gonna do my own strategic plan, and I'm gonna do it this way.
And then it fails, right? And the larger your organization, the more likely that is to happen along the way.
Anthony Vade: So it always keeps coming back to values. So often in these episodes that we have, shout out to David Allison, who was featured in season one. Uh, you can go and listen to that episode after [00:21:00] you've completed listening to this episode.
Of course, we deep dive in that difference between individual values and organizational values as well, and the risk we fall into of. Making our organizational values so vague that they sound like a horoscope that could apply to everybody just 'cause we think that's gonna create the behavior that we want to see.
Break and Recap
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Anthony Vade: We are gonna need to take a really short break here at this point. Uh, certainly gonna come back and I wanna unpack this a little bit more with you and understand how change can occur as a deeply human centered, experienced based journey as well. 'cause I think there's something that's come up through this.
You talk about path. Our company's name is Strategy Table Pathways. Although we just call it Strategy Table. We dunno what that's all about, but we believe that this journey is an important part. And actually curating what that change journey looks like, uh, is very, very vital. I'd love to hear your perspectives on that, but of course, a very quick break in will be right back.[00:22:00]
Okay, we're back. So what we talked about in the first half was really looking at this idea of designing for change and behavior change over time. And you shared it was really interesting that there were these. Traditional communication touchpoints. Some might be a big live experience in person where the CEO's connecting with the people within the organization and inspiring change through a one-off special experience.
Sometimes it's just an email that might be good or bad, and. It tends to happen over an extended period of time. Like you said, five years, 10 years, maybe institutional change will take 30 years. How much control and how aware do people responsible for change need to be of that reality of a journey? And how can they better design a journey or at least understand the kind of journey they need to take people on to really make behavior change happen?
Identity and Motivation
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Kristin Malek: And that's so deep, and we can get so [00:23:00] philosophical. When I am talking to leaders, prospective clients, existing clients, and they're coming to me and they're like, okay, this is the change that we're looking at. This is the change that's required. No, I'm built into a lot of really weird industries and a lot of like really cool things.
I'm on like a health equity over here. I'm on a microplastics, nanoplastics social activation over here. I'm on like this drug activation thing over here, right? So lots of, lots of different, um, really, really cool and impactful things. And when I'm talking about designing a journey or designing touchpoints, so much of it.
We talked about values. Before the break, and I would be remiss to not talk about the actual core thing of change, which is identity. You have a sense of identity, and when you change that identity also changes. So values are a level, and identity is the root of [00:24:00] everything, right? It's the seed of everything.
When we're talking about change and the journey, it depends on how different your current identity and your desired. Or even your company's desired identity is. Right. And I like to think of that, and I do talk about this in the book, as away from versus towards motivation. You can't sit there and uh, be.
Broke living paycheck to paycheck and look in the mirror and say, I'm a millionaire, and all the manifestation people are like, you need to keep saying it, but it's so outside the realm of possibility. Your brain's never gonna get there because you're living paycheck to paycheck. So the further away you are.
From your desired identity, we have to get you to neutral, which Ryan, um, briefly talked about as well. Like, we try to get people to neutral and then how can we get them to their [00:25:00] desired identity? How can we get them from broke living paycheck to paycheck, to having a thousand dollars in their savings to then like actually being a millionaire?
And so depending on the differences of where those are, if they're actively against it, right? So I always like to take a controversial topic here. So if you think politics or you think gun control, or you think anything that's like super, super controversial, if you're wanting people to be on one side.
Depending on where they're starting with, right? If they're super against the other side, it's gonna take them a while to get to neutral and then to positive. But if they're already neutral, they're like, oh, I don't really care this. It's much easier to get them. The other thing that we're constantly fighting with is apathy.
Our brains, our world, it's super overwhelming right now. That's why we're all doom scrolling at night and like trying to turn off our brain, which just makes it worse. Okay? So we're very apathetic about a lot of things. [00:26:00] And to get people to care to then have the change is also a different design problem.
That I love. I love design problems, and so I would say, Anthony, for your question, it's a lot of educating the leaders of what that journey would look like, right? That's the long answer. Okay. It's not a set three month, some changes. Again, you could do it a one hour keynote, some changes. Could be a three month campaign, some could be a year long campaign.
If I'm trying to change all of higher education across all of the state that I'm in or the country that I'm in, I mean, that's gonna be like a, a 10 year change with a lot of people listening to me. So, so there's that.
Anthony Vade: What I also heard there is this tremendous opportunity to think about the journey with a bit of a layered approach.
That there will be those who are on board with the first keynote, uh, and then there'll be those that will need three years to really buy in and really adopt the right [00:27:00] behaviors that we want to see. And there's this potential that that person who bought into the keynote and that first presentation could actually become the advocate.
The influence, the positive tool that you can have to help bring that other person along on that journey. And we so often do a one size fits all for the organization. Well, we'll just run this campaign and we fail to go, what does this campaign mean to the different individuals experiencing it? And we can get a bit more granular and I think we increase our chances of of success.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Teach Everyone
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Kristin Malek: This is so, so prevalent right now in anything education. So whether you're in a traditional like college or K through 12, whether you're in a workshop or a a speaker or you're doing a corporate program or anything. This thought process that we're teaching to the middle, oh my gosh, kill me.
Like, uh, we cannot teach to the middle. You have to start with the lowest person in the room, and you have [00:28:00] to, you have to take everybody along in the journey with you. When I do speaker trainings, I'm like, you have to start. With the very elementary spot, and they're like, but I only have 45 minutes. I only have 30 minutes.
Right? I only have 20 minutes. And if you don't start at the beginning and pick people up quickly along the way, you've already lost half the room. Right? You can't have effective change for an organization. For a community, even for an individual, if you're not met where you are. So when I give AI talks, artificial intelligence talks, I have that opening question of, okay, hold up on your hands from one to 10, tell me your comfort level with it.
But I always start my first slide with what is artificial intelligence? For those of you in the room that don't know, this is how I explain it in simple terms. And for everybody else, like. Cool. We're getting there. Uh, but I will always take those three to five minutes to start at the basics. 'cause otherwise you've lost everybody.
You have to design a journey, [00:29:00] not a where is the median or mean average point in the room that I'm talking to and that I think is missed so often
Neurobiology and Barriers
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Anthony Vade: I like as well, that you touch on the discomfort that somebody not knowing. What they're going through or not fully understanding the scenario that they're in can cause them to shut down at that point.
It's, and then you previously were mentioning the environmental elements as well, and we start to get into some of the neurobiology of things. There was a concerning study out of Princeton that looked at, uh, the effect on the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to predict. And envision potential futures, uh, for people who were under stress regularly in a state of trauma.
And in particular, if they were under financial stress for an extended period of time, they, they lost the ability to, like you said, empathize, uh, and to even see a potential future or, or a hope for the future as well. And what that led them to was making a whole bunch of really bad life choices generally.
[00:30:00] Continued this vicious cycle that we have. And I wonder maybe you have a perspective on this, do organizations and teams suffer from the same sort of scenario, do you think, where we get into these water seas, these spirals declining spirals of, of losing our empathy instead of stopping and pumping the brakes to think more deeply about, okay, how we emotionally, how we neurobiologically, how do we even start that kind of conversation?
Kristin Malek: When I come in, the very first thing that I do always, and I even write it in the book, is that it does not even matter what you contact me for. It doesn't matter. I will always start with the three things I wish I knew about our brain earlier in life. Always doesn't matter. The topic of the keynote doesn't matter.
The group I'm talking to, doesn't matter if it's a book, my own book, other people's like, doesn't matter. I will always start with the three things I wish I knew about our brain earlier, and it's super disruptive. It gets people to lean in. It gives people in that what's in it for me. It also [00:31:00] opens up the mind because once people become aware of like, oh, I have filters in my brain, like, oh, what am I filtering out then no matter what I'm saying after that.
They're more open-minded about it because they're understanding how their brain works. So I have never personally being who I am, I've never personally got into a room and had tons and tons of pushback because of the flow and the setup of what I do with my things. And that's what I'm teaching in facilitator training and speaker training is like the flow and decreasing all the barriers.
Is super, super important, and that's so critical to everything because the minute their barriers go up, the minute you say a controversial statement, and they cross their arms and they lean back, they're not listening to anymore, they don't care anymore. How can you get them at the beginning? People love to say a controversial topic or try to seek agreement, but again, you're not catching everybody.
Right. Because of the way that I start, everything that I do, it [00:32:00] applies to literally every single person in the room. So then they all lean forward. 'cause everybody has a human brain. And if you do not have a human brain, you're not listening to me, right? 'cause you're dead. So everybody has a human brain and so it is just something that like brings us all together, but also opens up their minds a lot.
I also do have a rule which helps Anthony in this part, if I'm dealing with an executive leadership team. In my contract, I will say, if you do not have a hundred percent attendance when I show up, we will reschedule. If I've got the executive team and you guys are driving direction to everybody, a hundred percent attendance.
And I have definitely gone into a room and been like, okay, we're rescheduling. 'cause not everybody's here and they've gotta all be on the same page with it. Right. And I know a lot of facilitators who. Who don't necessarily feel strong enough or stick to it, that everybody has to be there, and that's also a big problem too.
Calls to Action
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Anthony Vade: So as is our tradition, we end every episode of accessible [00:33:00] disruption with a simple call to action. What can listeners do to create positive change in their worlds? Uh, we're gonna come to you last, Kristen, of course. But I want to hit with Ryan first. Have you got one for us? What's your call to action for this episode?
Ryan Hill: Uh, I'm gonna go back to my first few questions. Uh, I really appreciated the idea. Think about your personal values and then levying that against what you value about working where you work, where the organization you work for, but looking at that disparity, and I think that's a really interesting tool that we should all do periodically just to make sure that we're, I think, in sync with our needs and our actions and our words, our beliefs.
So I, that's my call to action. I think. Sit down and do that. Put your own values and look. Values you see at work and see what the gaps are.
Anthony Vade: Tahir, what's your code to action?
Tahira Endean: Well, based on this, I'm gonna say avoid the messy middle start at the beginning, work to the top. It's, it's a trap we often fall into, and if we can get past [00:34:00] that.
And set people up so that they can lean in, move them through the middle, and get them on a path to behavior change, then that's where we're succeeding. So thank you for framing that so beautifully, Kristen.
Anthony Vade: Yeah. Kristen, I'm gonna give you the opportunity to share your, uh, final call to action. Uh, I feel like we could have talked, like I said at the beginning for a 3, 4, 5 hour marathon here.
So we'll have to have you back on a future episode to dissect this a little bit more. But what's your little bite-sized takeaway that you. Think will empower our listeners to, uh, take these brilliant ideas, these brilliant concepts, and create massive action with them.
Kristin Malek: Absolutely. I have a great one and.
I'm not the host, but I'm gonna say, Anthony, I'm not gonna answer until you answer
Anthony Vade: my call to action would be Okay. Here you go. You are not comfortable being a self-promoter, so I'm gonna say pick up a copy of Kristen's book so you can really dig into this topic in a meaningful way. And my real call to action, aside from getting the book, which you should do [00:35:00] anyway after this conversation 'cause it's.
Been so insightful. We want you to share your experience with the book, with our Strategy table community as well. 'cause it's gonna be on our bookshelf very soon. And we want to spark a dialogue around not only this episode of the podcast, but also the book as well. And guess what? Links in the description of this episode.
Pick up Kristen's book. There you go. Is that enough for you? Can you, can we have your,
Kristin Malek: but I mean, thanks.
My biggest call to action, and it's an interesting one that we haven't touched on a whole lot, but my biggest call to action is anytime you feel activated, I like to say activated because it's not just when you feel negative, it's also when you feel positive, right? Anytime you feel outside of your neutral middle zone.
You feel activated, just get curious about it and curiosity about, oh, that's interesting. I'm curious [00:36:00] why I responded that way. That was interesting. Right? Just curiosity is a very magical state of being and getting curious about your personal activations. Can really unravel a lot of the filters and lenses in your brain that you don't even know were there because they were formed a long, long time ago when you were children, right?
Didn't even know you were creating filters, and now you're living with them. So if that didn't make sense, then you'll have to read the book and hear me on a future episodes.
Anthony Vade: No, it, it made such beautiful sense. It really did.
Wrap Up and Subscribe
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Anthony Vade: So of course, all the listeners out there, you're gonna have to subscribe, like, share, and follow accessible disruption to hear future episodes with our great.
Guests and Dr. K of course, we want you to head over to strategy table.co. Sign up for your seat at the table where you can hear extended versions of our podcast, ad free listening. Join our table community where we have a bookshelf, where we explore [00:37:00] amazing books like Dr. K's. Of course, there's our little chat community in the back end there too, where we share some of the experiments we're doing, some of the prototyping.
We'd love you to have a seat at the table with us. So head on over to strategy table.co. But for now. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Accessible Disruption.
Podcast Host: Accessible Disruption is written and spoken by Tahir and Dean Ryan Hill and Anthony Vade. All content is developed in collaboration with the team at Strategy Table Podcast production by experience design changing. An association with the change lead network. Find more information@strategytable.co.
