Ep. 023: Beyond Quick Fixes: The Truth About Transforming Organizations

Welcome back Bridge Builders to Bread to Lead, the podcast transforming leadership across industries. I'm your host Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs and I'm thrilled that you're here. We're currently ranked as the 30th top business and leadership podcast nationwide and it's all thanks to listeners like you. Bridge Builders, if you haven't already grabbed a copy of my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon, it's packed with strategies to elevate your leadership game. Got questions or ideas for the show? Visit us at breadtolid.com and if you're finding value here, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcast. Your support helps us reach more leaders. Now let's dive in and continue breeding excellence in leadership. Today's episode awaits Bridge Builders. Bridge Builders, Bridge Builders, this is actually the second episode that we have going live and I was contemplating on going live again because I wasn't really for sure on if I wanted to continue going live but I had some good feedback with going live and if you're new to watching Bread to Lead, you heard on the introduction, we are the number 34 ranked business and leadership podcast in the entire country, United States of America. I'm extremely excited about that. If you don't know the origin of Bread to Lead, Bread to Lead is a podcast from our company, Sips Healthcare. If you know anything about healthcare, healthcare is the number one industry that literally touches any and everybody and what we wanted for this podcast, of course, we want to continue to elevate our community in the healthcare space as we do provide support for periodical services and central steel processing in hospitals. We're known for turning around departments all over the country in hospitals. We wanted to provide a podcast that was longstanding. It was broad and it's reach because we believe just like healthcare leadership is a broad topic that we believe that the principles that we're learning in turning around hospitals all over the country and those departments that definitely deal with saving lives that are at risk of dying or dealing with major illnesses, that those principles can definitely be added going forward. Today's episode is something that is going to be a good one. If you are new to the podcast, this is not a podcast that was created for entertainment. It's a podcast that's specifically focused on creating transformational change and leadership. We believe that leadership is a dying breed here. We believe that there's a lot of people who have the aspirations to be managers, but no one is doing the work to be leaders and we want to ensure that there is a platform that is truly teaching people the principles needed to truly engage in true change so that we can be able to not only keep quality leaders in healthcare, but all across every industry, every sector we need it. If you're new to this podcast, please, please, please go to breadtoly.com, leave a comment, go and review this podcast after this episode and let's just get right into it. Today, Bridge Builders, we're diving into a critical truth about organizational transformation and this episode is called, Beyond Quick Fixes, The Truth About Transforming Organizations. I was watching a Colorado Buffs actually this past weekend and seeing what Coach Dion Sanders Primetime is doing with that organization. Taking an organization that historically had created such an environment of toxicity that losing and mediocrity was in bread in its DNA. This is something that when Coach Primetime took the job, the biggest thing that he was focusing on and reinforcing in this transformation was first changing the culture. When Coach Primetime took over the job at Colorado, they were 1-in-18 the first year and he brought so much attention and notoriety and expectation to his organization. It forced the world to look at what he was doing with his team and with his organization. His first year, they were 4-in-8 and of course it led a lot of people down, but a lot of people don't realize that you can't go from a decade of 1-in-18 to the very next year getting someone who is bringing belief into an organization and expecting a winning record. They started off strong, but a lot of the games they were in, they were tough losses, but they were close. This is letting you know that they're right on the precipice of change, but belief was something that was missing. So Coach Primetime in Colorado had reinforced something I've been teaching leaders for years, that real transformation starts with belief in culture, not metrics in processes. And this resonates deeply with my work in organizational transformation. When I step into a struggling organization, the first thing leaders typically show me are their metrics, their process maps, their improvement initiatives. But here's what I've learned through the years of turning around organizations. If you don't change the belief system first, none of those technical changes will stick. Let's break down what real transformation looks like. And Casey, again, you're new to the podcast. As you can tell, I'm a trainer by nature. I went to school for education, so I'd just like to get into the meat of it because I do believe that you don't have enough time to waste. I think that this real estate that you have, that you call a brain, has so much stuff going in and out. I just tried to get into the meat of the lesson. So when we break down what real transformation looks like, it starts with understanding that there are three distinct phases every organization must go through to achieve lasting change. The first phase is what we call cultural reset. This is where most transformation efforts fail because leaders try to skip straight to technical solutions. They want to implement new systems, new processes, new metrics. But if your people don't believe changes possible, if they don't trust in the direction that you're going, those changes will never take root. Think about it. Think about what happens with most struggling organizations. People have accepted certain limitations as truth. Here are some of the sayings that they will say. That's just how things are done here. We've tried that before. It won't work in our industry. These aren't just statements. These are symptoms of a deeper cultural issue that has to be addressed first. From my work in turning around organizations all across industries, especially now in healthcare, I found that cultural reset phase requires three key elements, belief system, standards, and leadership alignment. If you miss any one of these three, and your transformation efforts will begin to stall before they truly begin. We're going to talk about these three elements because culture has to be the first thing you focus on before you get to the technical things. We're going to first break down this first phase of transformation, which is changing the heart. Here's the biggest piece. Everyone tries to change the mind. We try to work on the development skills, the technical skills, and healthcare in our industry. A lot of people, we talk about all of these other things. How to clean an instrument. We talk about patient safety. We talk about water quality. We talk about all these technical things. But the one most important thing that's needed is training on the heart. The belief. Things that will make people truly move. If you believe in something internally inside, your brain will want to learn the technical skills to be able to back up and support that thing that you believe in. So let me share something I see repeatedly. Leaders will come to me frustrated because their improvement initiatives aren't sticking. They've invested in new systems, bought new technology, brought in consultants, implemented new processes, but nothing changes. Why? Because they haven't addressed the underlying beliefs that drive behavior in organizations. And before we get into the three elements that drive this change in an organization, one thing I have to say in order to be able to just set the tone. If your leadership is focused more on their personal income and their personal glory, their personal story and their personal accolades, it's going to be absolutely impossible for you to actually build an organization that creates substantial change. If the way that you're recruiting your organization and your talent and your leaders is by way of how much they get paid, how much commission they'll make, what their job position is going to be. If you're hiring people that are just focused on job hopping, this is going to be the crutch of your entire organization because there's no way you can truly build belief with temporary mindsets. When you talk about leaders that truly create indefinite change, they don't come to an organization for a period of time until they get the next promotion or the next raise. And unfortunately, I meet a lot of leaders across sectors all over the world that when the first thing they talk to me is about money, their position, the impact they want everyone in the world to bring to them or to hear from them, I immediately know they won't last long. Because any great leader that's really great at transformation, you create the opportunity where you are. You don't go hunting for it. So that first element, that belief systems, it requires you to understand what your organization truly believes about itself. Not what's written in mission statements or posted on walls, but what people actually believe is possible or impossible in your organization. I've worked with organizations, organization recently, where every conversation about improvement started with a litany of reasons why change wouldn't work. We're different. You don't understand our unique challenges. We've tried that before. Y'all, these weren't just excuses. They were deeply held beliefs that had become a part of the organization's identity. Changing these belief systems start with creating visible evidence that contradicts these limiting beliefs. You have to engineer small wins that challenge the that's impossible here. But here's the key. These wins that you bring the organization have to be visible. They have to be undeniable and are directly connected to the beliefs you're trying to change. Oh, I'm teaching. I'm teaching today. I'm telling you I'm teaching because if I'm coming into an organization and you're talking about changing beliefs and you're not getting quick wins in the areas that they said originally were impossible, you're not going to get any buy-in to the level that you actually need. So this is why as we're curating and we're building true change in the organization, we have to go and get those wins quickly. Now those wins are not always wins that will show up on a scoreboard, meaning the money or meaning contracts or meaning clients or more surgeries or more customers. Those wins are internal things that you need to be able to show and prove that whatever your mindset or mentality was prior to me can no longer exist because what you considered impossible is something I created a possibility that I made possible in a short period of time. And what it's going to do is either going to anchor people in or root people out or push people out because of resentment. The second element of truly changing the culture are standards. So the first element was changing the belief system. Once people's belief has changed, now you have to create standards that keep that belief intact. Now notice I didn't say anything about money, anything about promotions, anything about raising pay, anything about the result of these things being implemented. This cost savings, more revenue, pay raises are all a response to standards in belief changing. Wins have to happen after full commitment takes place. Now this second element, standards, this is where many leaders think they should start. They want to implement new performance standards, new metrics, new expectations, new KPIs, but without addressing belief systems first, these new standards will never stick. Real standards aren't just about performance metrics, holding people accountable, creating boundaries. Real standards are about how we operate, how we communicate, how we carry ourselves. They're about the small daily behaviors that either reinforce excellence or perpetuate mediocrity. In my space in healthcare, what I'm seeing is that you find a lot of consultants, specialist subject matter experts that speak a lot about standards, processes, systems, KPIs because these are buzzwords. But in order to truly change an organization, you can't change an organization in 13 weeks with a temporary staff. You can't change an organization in 26 weeks with, it doesn't matter how great, how great that subject matter expert is. None of those things matter because if belief isn't there, if true belief is not there, true change can happen. So it's not about metrics, standards, it's about how we see ourselves in this organization. Then the third element to completely changing culture is leadership alignment. It's crucial. Your leadership team needs to understand that transformation isn't a program or an initiative. Y'all, we're going to take this leadership program. We're going to have a leadership initiative. That's not leadership alignment. Leadership alignment is a fundamental shift in how we operate and take accountability. Your leaders when creating this change, they have to be prepared for resistance, prepared for setbacks, and prepared to maintain standards even when it's difficult. When I talk about leadership alignment, I'm not just talking about verbal agreement. I'm talking about demonstrated commitment. Your leaders need to be the first to embody the new standards, the first to challenge limiting beliefs, the first to show what is possible. If you as a leader, you're only thinking, hey, my technicians or my entry level workers or my working professionals that are not in any leadership, they need to change first. If your organization is underperforming, that's a telltale sign you need to change first. If your organization is not getting it done, it means that you need to create change first. Then down to your next level of leadership, then down to the lower level of leadership, then down to the rest of the staff. So no, we're not talking about verbal agreement. We're talking about full commitment to the plan and full commitment to transformation within an organization. We'll be back after this commercial. Are you ready to transform your leadership journey? Get my book, Read to Lead on Amazon now. In it, you'll discover the proven frameworks and strategies I've used to help leaders across industries master each phase of their leadership development. Don't just lead, be bred to lead. Get your copy today on Amazon. So as I said, this is my second week going live. I kind of liked just giving clips and driving people to the podcast. If those that are watching it live, you want me to continue to go live with the podcast, please send me comments on the video. Please reach out to us on bred to lead.com or sipshealthcare.com if you want us to continue going live. If not, this will be a short pilot because I want you to be more concerned with what I'm saying than the visuals of how I'm saying it. So after we get through the first phase, which is resetting the culture, the second phase of transformation is what I call technical evolution. This is where most organizations want to start. But if you don't get the culture reset right, this phase becomes more ineffective. But if you get the cultural reset right, technical evolution is guaranteed to happen. In the technical evolution phase, you're focused on systems, processes and capabilities. But here's what makes this different. When you've reset the culture first, people approach these technical changes with a different mindset. Instead of resistance, you get engagement. Instead of this won't work, you get how can we make this work? Let me share something I see often in this phase. Organizations that skip the cultural reset try to force technical changes through mandate. I see this all the time. Where leadership will say you're mandated to operate in this new scope because we can no longer accept this anymore. How can you mandate when you're the one who accepted this culture? In order to really effectively implement a new mandate, a new process, a new system, a new technical approach, you have to reset the culture to ensure that they're ready. Just like tilling the land. In order to truly get good value out of your crop that season, you have to make sure you truly till the land correctly. The organizations that skip cultural reset and try to force technical changes through mandates, they rely heavily on authority and compliance. You'll hear a lot of novice leaders in transformational change speak a lot about authority and compliance. This is no offense to anybody. These are just things that are proven. If I'm coming into an organization that has a terrible culture talking about compliance and regulations, when as a culture in our organization, we've never adhered to compliance and regulations. What makes you think that coming in and bringing in a subject matter expert or a consultant or a company or hiring someone else that's going to really enforce compliance? What makes you think that they're truly going to shift the organization? Because in truth, your staff may get along to get along, but the moment that that person is gone, the moment they're going to either try to run that person away. I've seen it all the time. The staff will form a coup and they all will be in agreement just like that when you get a new teacher and the students don't want a new teacher or your parents or your children, you move on and you get married and you got a new step of parent that you want to introduce to your children. Your children want the old parents so bad back, so they act absolutely crazy until it really runs off the person that you're in love with. This is exactly what happens in organizations all the time. Your team will literally form a coup. When they form that coup, they'll work together to push out whoever you felt like you hired to bring that change, especially when they're coming with a hard hammer. Usually organizations will hire the hard hammer. Before you know it, that hard hammer, it's not hammering as hard as you thought they would. This is what organizations that have done the culture reset right. The ones that have done the culture reset right first find that there are people actually pulling for these changes and they're looking for ways to make them work. In the technical evolution phase, it evolves in three key areas, the same way that cultural reset involved in three key elements. The three key areas that the technical evolution phase changes is process optimization, capability development and system integration. Each of these three areas requires both technical expertise and cultural alignment. You cannot have highly efficient organization where their processes are optimized, the capability development is off the chart if they don't believe in the organization, the leadership or their environment. Process optimization isn't just about making things more efficient, it's about creating processes that reinforce your new culture and standards. When you're redesigning workflows, you're not just thinking about speed and efficiency, you're thinking about how these processes either support or undermine your cultural transformation. Quality development goes beyond just training people on new skills. It's about building capabilities that transformed organizations need. This might mean technical skills, but it also means developing the problem solving capabilities, the leadership capabilities and the change management capabilities that your organization needs to sustain transformation. Here's the deal, you'll find yourself teaching people new technical skills that will become outdated. If they don't have that proactive spirit or nature in them, leadership capabilities, problem solving capabilities, change management capabilities, what will happen is you're going to find yourself in the same situation over and over again. Over and over again. You can't develop technical skills successfully without also successfully developing the leadership, change management and problem solving capabilities. How many people do you know? They're really good at what they do, but because they're not good at being around or being involved with anyone creates a toxic environment and that toxic environment becomes an environment that's inefficient. And then system integration. System integration is where many organizations struggle. They implement new systems without considering how these systems interact with their culture. But when you've done the culture reset right, you can design and implement systems that reinforce your new culture rather than fights against it. Let me share something crucial about this technical evolution phase. Many organizations see resistance during technical changes as a process problem. But in my experience, when you're getting significant resistance during technical changes, it's usually a sign that your cultural reset isn't complete. A lot of governments say that tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech tech The resistant isn't to the change itself. It's a system of underlining cultural issues that haven't fully been addressed. I've worked with an organization that was trying to implement a new operating system. They tried three times before, and in each attempt it failed. When we came in, we didn't start by looking at technical implementation plans. We started by understanding the cultural barriers. And here's the thing, especially in healthcare. Because in healthcare, a lot of systems are so reactive and not proactive, versus investing and supporting the help when you feel like you don't need it. They wait until things hit the fan, then they call us in to completely change or provide support. But imagine sending my specialists or my technicians or my consultants into a culturally toxic environment, and you want them to create lasting transformational technical change with a culture and an environment that is opposite of what's needed for change. So with this organization in particular, we started by understanding the cultural barriers. And what we found was that people didn't believe the organization was capable of successfully implementing major changes. And this belief had been reinforced by more than three failed attempts. Before we even touched the technical aspects, we had to rebuild the belief. We did this through a series of smaller successful changes that demonstrated the organization's capability to implement change effectively. Only then did we move forward with technical implementation. Here's something. A lot of organizations when you're hiring a consulting firm, you want the consulting firm to come in and create all this change and not realizing that the human element is still involved. You cannot have too drastic of a change in an organization too fast. And so what happens when you have too drastic of a change in an organization and a limited runway for that change, it's inevitable that your efforts are going to fail. And when your team and your staff see that no matter what happens, change can't happen. The belief now goes away. And now every time you bring somebody new, there's an expectation that the result will still be the same. We'll go to our second commercial break and we will be right back. If you like in the podcast, please put something in the comments right now. If you're liking the live and you're listening to it, you're watching the playback on YouTube right now. If you're listening to this on the podcast later on on Apple podcast, please, please, please do not hesitate to share, share, share, review, review, review, and leave me comments. Hit me in a direct message on LinkedIn, Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs, TAYLORLAR, so that we can continue to ensure that you're getting the information that you need to create the change that you desire. Bridge builders, developing transformational leaders is crucial for the future of healthcare. At Sims Healthcare Solutions, we offer comprehensive leadership development programs designed specifically for healthcare professionals. From executive coaching to immersive workshops, we can help you cultivate the transformational leadership skills your organization needs to thrive in today's complex healthcare landscape. Visit sipshealthcare.com to explore our leadership development offerings and take the first steps toward transforming your organization. So in case you all did not know, we will be launching our Sips Leadership Institute here pretty soon. Go find out more information about our Sips Leadership Institute. Actually, let me get the book. Go find out more information about our Sips Leadership Institute on sipshealthcare.com forward slash leadership. Forward slash leadership because we're going to be bringing leadership to healthcare in a way that we believe has never been done before. Here's our first textbook on leadership. Here's our first textbook on leadership. So when it does open, you do enroll into our program. Our program, our institute comes with textbooks that will allow for you to change and take your leadership track to another level. So I'm extremely excited about our first certification healthcare foundational leader so that we can really start rebuilding what leadership looks like in healthcare. And those of you that are not in healthcare and you're interested to learn leadership principles, there are fundamental principles that you learn here. We just made sure that we made it directly for healthcare. So if you're in a process and this is definitely something that you want to participate in any other healthcare. So we first talked about the cultural reset in order to create transformational change. Then we talked about the technical evolution phase. The third phase of transformation is sustainable excellence. This is where most organizations never reach because they either skip cultural reset or they rush through the technical evolution phase. Sustainable excellence isn't just about maintaining what you've built. It's about creating an organization that continuously evolves and improves. It's about building what I call a self improving system. I tell any leader that your company should actually look like a university. Your company should be an internal university where learning and evolving never ends. One of the biggest mistakes that organizations typically historically make is that we make getting better, taking our organization to the next level, growing and changing. We make these things, how do you say, like there's an end. Like hey, if you just get this certification, that's all you need. If you just do this, you don't need anything else. If you just focus on that, your life will be changed versus telling the truth that if you want to be great, there is no end to learning. There is no end to improving. There is no end to evolution. If you truly want an organization where the culture is full of people that are excelling, if you're telling your people all we have to do is just this end service and after that end service, you're good to go. No, that's not how change happens. Let me break down what I mean by a self improving system. Most organizations approach improvement as a series of initiatives or projects. Like we got to do this thing and then that thing and then this thing. If you get this certification, then you get that certification, then you get that certification, then you get this leadership certification. And with those four certifications, that's all you need to be great. You're creating a culture that will fail. But in a self improvement system, improvement is built into the daily operations of the organization. It becomes a part of how you work, not additional to the work you do. And just like the cultural reset, just like the technical evolution, in order to create sustainable excellence, there are three key elements. The first one is embedded learning, proactive adaption and cultural reinforcement. Embedded learning means that learning and improvement are built into your regular workflows. Every success and every failure becomes an opportunity for learning and improvement. This isn't about formal training programs. It's about creating systems and processes that naturally generate learning and improvement. Proactive adaption. It's about building the capabilities to see and respond to changes before they become problems. This means developing what I call an organizational sensing mechanism, which are ways to detect and respond to changes in your environment before they impact your performance. But when you have an entire organization that thinks reactively and not proactively, this is when it feels like more work. And I love the sports analogy. In sports, you practice more than you play. But when you go to work, everything gets played. There are no practices. There are no practices. There is no continuous training. If I'm going to build an organization, continuous training is a part of the process. Except you have organizations that fail at true growth. They make training an event. You go through it once a quarter, once a year, and it's just like something. It's not anything that's like a big difference or a big deal. And this is the issue. That most organizations fail at. Cultural reinforcement is perhaps the most crucial element. This is where many organizations start to slip. They achieve some success and think the work is done. But culture isn't something you fix and forget. It's something you have to continuously reinforce and evolve. And there's something critical about this phase. Leadership's role changes. Instead of driving change, leaders need to focus on maintaining the conditions that allow the organization to continuously improve and adapt. This means protecting the culture, removing barriers to improve it, and ensuring resources are available for continuous education and evolution. Let me share something that I tied all together. When I look at organizations that have achieved sustainable excellence, they all share one common characteristic. They made the shift from seeing transformation as a destination to seeing it as a journey. This shift changes everything. It changes how you lead, how you measure success, and how you approach challenges. It's not about reaching some perfect state. It's about building an organization that's capable of continuous evolution and improvement. Look at Coach Prime again. His success at Colorado isn't just about changing practices or implementing new systems. It's about creating an environment where excellence is expected, where continuous improvement is the norm, and where everyone understands their role in their organization's evolution. This brings me to some critical insights that I want to share with you. Bridge builders. These are things that separate successful transformations from failed ones. First, understand that transformation is both a science and an art. The science is the systems, the processes, and metrics. The art is knowing when to push and when to pause, when to challenge and when to support, when to focus on culture and when to drive technical change. Second, recognize that resistance isn't always negative. In fact, resistance often shows you exactly where you need to focus. When I enter an organization and encounter no resistance, I get worried. It usually means that either people don't care enough to resist, or they don't believe change is actually possible. Third, and this is crucial, the role of leadership in transformation isn't to have all the answers. Your role is to create the conditions where answers can emerge, where people feel safe to innovate, and where continuous improvement becomes a part of your DNA. Now, Bridge builders, let me leave you with some actionable insight. That you can start implementing immediately. Begin with honestly assessing your organization's belief systems. Don't start with processes or metrics. Start with understanding what your people truly believe is possible or impossible. These beliefs will either fuel your transformation or kill it before it starts. Next, learn to understand what your people truly believe is possible or impossible. Look at your standards. Not just performance standards, but your behavioral standards. What behaviors do you actually accept versus what you say you expect? The gap between these tells you what your cultural work needs to begin. Where it needs to begin. Then finally, examine your approach to leadership alignment. Are your leaders truly aligned around transformation or do they just agree with it? There's a crucial difference. Agreement without alignment will sink your transformation efforts every time. Remember Bridge builders, real transformation isn't about quick fixes or immediate results. It's about creating fundamental shifts in how your organization thinks, operates, and evolves. Just like Coach Prom understood at Colorado, the scoreboard isn't the only measure of transformation. Real change happens in the hearts and the minds of your people first, then in your processes and systems, and finally in your results. If you haven't gotten a bookbred to leave, please go to Amazon. Get the bookbred to leave. If you're a leader, get it for you and someone else you want to hold you accountable. Or you want to hold accountable to this change. If you're not a leader, get this and get a couple of books for you and your upper leadership. Bred to Leave by Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs on Amazon. And then for those of you that are going to be interested in our SPS Leadership Institute to truly bring transformational change to organizations all over healthcare. Go to SPSHealthcare.com forward slash leadership. You can find out more about our leadership program. And then lastly, we have a free complimentary transformational leadership summit called the Executive Edge. That's happening the third week of November. Please go to SPSHealthcare.com forward slash summit so that you can register for our free summit. Which is going to be a half a day where we're really going to be working on all of the skillsets that we need. And yes, it will be virtual so you can be anywhere at any place at any time and get this training. This is Dr. Jake Taylor Jacobs signing off. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Bred to Lead. Until next time, keep leading, keep transforming and keep breeding excellence in everything you do. And remember, Breds Builders, transformation isn't about changing what you do. It's about changing who you are as an organization. Make that change count. Thank you for joining me today. Breds Builders, I'll see you next time on Bred to Lead. I'm out.