Jennifer Selby Long
speaker
698 appearances
14 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Jennifer Selby Long’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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He actually went and advocated that this other man should head one of the most exciting new divisions that the company was creating. And this man did go over and do that. And he did lead that division in its early days quite well, because in part, he didn't need to change to lead that. He was already established. kind of reasonably well suited to it.
And so it was extremely enlightening to me because until my client made that decision and that commitment, we struggled. We really struggled. That team had been brought together through two acquisitions. That team was so far behind Vince.
They actually had worked very hard on two software releases that they had to literally cast aside because they fell so far behind because they did not move as one that the other technology leapfrogged it and it no longer was appropriate, right? It no longer fit with the company's other technology. So this was an organization that was in crisis and it was when
He was able to just recognize, hey, this is a failed exercise, right? We cannot bring this guy along to where we need to. And I'm going to stop trying. This was, by the way, about 20 years ago. And so I found myself really admiring and recognizing the joy of learning something about change from one of my own clients. Whereas usually I'm the one in the teacher's seat.
And I really learned deeply from that experience because me on that idealist, I never want to give up on anybody. And so it was so helpful for me to see someone willing to say, I think we need to give up on this.
this is not succeeding and we need to not judge the efforts that we made to make it succeed we need to find a totally different path here totally and completely different it was fantastic and so i eye-opening for me so eye-opening earlier you mentioned the do's and the domes when going through change
yes i think that there are a lot of parallels to bill bridge's model but something that you said there about his third his is you know unfreeze again his third and final stage is that you emerge with a new identity and i think that this is so vital for us as leaders to understand that when we are asking our people to make a significant change
they often do have a change in their fundamental identity or how they see themselves and it can be hard to recognize because often in the leadership role we already see them in that way if we didn't see that they had the potential collectively and individually
to make this change successful, we probably wouldn't have started down that path or we wouldn't have brought in some different people to lead them. So it is so vital to understand that change management is about hitting the target, right? Implementing the change on time, within budget, to a set standard.
But this can actually be much more profound for others than we recognize because they can come out of it with a new identity. Think of, for example, my clients who are financial analysts. Today, even just as recently as three years ago, the technology didn't really exist for them to spend the bulk of their time Truly advising senior business leaders on what they should be doing in the business.
They had very little time to say things like, hey, here's a market force that I see going on in Japan. And I think we need to focus 40% more of our sales effort there on this product line. No way. They were too busy being Excel jockeys, right? Today, that technology has come a very long way.
But what happens to someone who for 10 years has been spending most of their time, maybe not real happily, but spending most of their time just getting those numbers accurate? And now suddenly you are telling them that within a matter of months, those leaders are going to be able to press a button and see the data that you used to have put together for them.
And they are now going to turn to you and say, what should I do? Or what happens when the leader doesn't turn to them and say, what should I do? Now, suddenly it's a new identity and they're recognizing they have to earn it. They have to earn that credibility as something more than a master Excel jockey.
that is terrifying that's terrifying that's a whole new set of skills they're going to have to learn how to convert that data into a story they're going to have to learn how to influence they're going to have to learn how to read that person and speak in their language it's terrifying it's terrifying and so really recognizing that people are going to come out of this change with a new identity helps you as a leader
to have that empathy on the path and to be able to really encourage and support them and put in place what they need to get there that you otherwise might not have recognized, whether it's training and develop, mentoring, coaching, whatever it may be that they're going to need.
I'm really glad you brought up the freeze, unfreeze, freeze model, because that new identity in the last stage is the single most important part of that model.
The wind sometimes looks different at the end than we thought it would at the beginning. So I think absolutely it's fair to step back throughout the change and say, this is what we thought the wind would look like. Is this still true? Or have we come across new information and new learnings along the way that allow us to see what the wind looks like differently?
So I think that's entirely valid because it might not look like you have a win yet, but maybe you do. Maybe it looks different than you think. Maybe what you have here is a small win along the way that you need to celebrate for the progress, even if they've not quite yet gotten to where you see that they could be in the long run.
Because certainly when we look at those key elements, as a leader, you're not doing change alone. Even if it's a personal change, I bet you have friends or family members that come along. And one of those foundations that you really need to attend to is celebrating the dickens out of wins that are so small that you wouldn't normally think to celebrate them.
Because this requires that you focus a lot more of your attention on what's working in the win, and sorry, in the change, versus focusing your attention on what's not working. And guess what? Those saboteurs are hardwired to focus on what's not working.
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