E031: Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity with Curtis Bateman

Change is a constant in life, and a lot of the most successful people out there seem to be masters at turning every change into opportunity. It’s one of the most important skills you can have. 

That's why we're thrilled to have Curtis Bateman, a renowned change expert and co-author of the new book “Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity" on the show today. 

Curtis joined FranklinCovey as a senior change consultant and with years of experience helping individuals and organizations navigate change, Curtis knows what it takes to embrace the unknown and come out on top, whether you wanted it or not!

And today, he shares some of the strategies and tools we can utilise to take back control of every new situation.

We cover:

• why some people are more resistant to change, and how we can turn it into our superpower
• Personality traits to develop for being successful in a dynamic world
• The importance of psychological flexibility 
• The zones of navigating change successfully 
• How can we innovate to maximise the benefit of change
• Why choosing change is far more effective than waiting for it to happen
• How to get better from change rather than just hope, wait & endure

Curtis is the co-author of "Change: How to Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity."


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Find out more and apply HERE

Transcript

scott:
Curtis, how would you describe what it is that you do first?

curtis_bateman:
Oh, well, that's a great question. The reason I pause and smile is that Franklin Covey have the real privilege of doing quite a few things. But one of the ones that, of course, why we're here to talk today is because of the work I've done on change. So maybe a little background first though. So I'm a vice president at Franklin Covey responsible for all of our offices outside of North America, which is an eclectic group and really fun. So part of what I do is lead people. I lead people and teams and projects. I think that's relevant to the topic, it adds to the body of experience I have. But for the better part of 20 years, I've been a change practitioner, looking at how is it that you work with teams, leaders, individuals, organizations, and help them be just a little bit better with the next change that's coming their way. And so, I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit of this.

scott:
And what is it that sort of led you into the world of change and becoming an expert on change in particular? Was there something that galvanized you and thought, I need to actually go deeper on this?

curtis_bateman:
I wish I had some really fantastic answer, but it was sheer dumb luck. 25 years ago, I had the real privilege to start working with Dr. Spencer Johnson, who wrote a book called, Who Moved My Cheese? One of the best-selling books around on the topic of change, and it was a parable. And I spent 10 years working with him, and I just slowly found my passion increasing for it. that 10-year period of time started to develop my own thinking and some of our own tools and ideas beyond what Dr. Johnson had done. His parable really focused on an individual and a couple of moments during change that are quite poignant for people where they get to make some choices. And so I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the idea of parables. I fell in love with the idea of helping individuals and teams figure out how to improve their performance. And from there, it's just continued to grow over the last 20 years. So maybe that's a cool start. But it felt like sheer dumb luck. I found a great job with some friends I knew and it led me on this journey, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

scott:
What was one of the biggest takeaways that you took from Dr. Johnson and that book in particular?

curtis_bateman:
You know, I had the privilege of spending about a week every three months with him in Hawaii. I know that's a real burden to face,

scott:
Oh.

curtis_bateman:
but I spent about... And so we would just hang out and spend four weeks a year in Hawaii talking about the business, change what worked. And there are two things that I took from my work with him a lot, but two that are probably worthy of highlighting. Number one, relentless, relentless focus on message and getting the message right. I remember how much time and energy he would spend on a paragraph. One call we were on, we debated over two words in this one sentence for an hour and I thought, oh my goodness, you're killing me. But what I loved is it mattered to him. He realized that every one of those nuances mattered. I'll give you an example. When the Whom of My Cheesebook first came out, one of the main characters, him, did not go back to find Ha, who was lost in the maze. And there was quite a bit of feedback about it. And so he really, really thought about, well, what's going on here? And he added a revision where him went back to help Ha just one time. And so we were having dinner one night and he said, want people to realize they have to be really deliberate around how much energy they invest in helping people choose to change or not. He said you can use every ounce of energy a team or a leader has helping somebody that really won't change. He wasn't saying there's a wrong or a right. He's saying I want to provoke people to think and so his intentionality around the writing and really trying to motivate people to think and behave differently was inspiring Then I really appreciate his mentoring during that early stages of my change journey with his business.

scott:
I love that. Why is it that you think some people are more resistant to change than others then?

curtis_bateman:
Hmm. Well, you know, we all have different personalities. We all have different experiences. And over time, a mixture of our personality, our DNA, our experiences start to create a set of lenses that we place in front of our eyes around how we view the world. Some people have this onboard wiring of real enthusiasm for new and different. But most of us have this instinct that develops. I think it's natural. It's probably the reptilian brain. Hey, change can be really, really frightening. And we need to protect ourselves. And so then when you add life experience as additional layers of lens, it causes us to be super cautious because a lot of changes just don't go well. In organizational change, they don't go well. And so we have this bias that develops over time along with our human nature that says, I've had a lot of bad experiences with this. to this idea of it's not going to be good. Matter of fact, in one survey we ran for a few years, 88% of individuals think change is going to lead to something worse for them, which is really fascinating Scott, because if you pause and reflect on your life or a period of time at work or personally, so much of the great things that mature and come to the forefront in our lives are a result of a change that brought us something better. Sometimes it's a new piece of technology, sometimes it's a new role, sometimes it's a choice we make about moving, moving house, changing careers, and every one of those is a change and they so often lead to something better. But our frame of reference says this is not gonna be good. So there's this real friction that exists every time we start to talk about change.

scott:
Do you think there's a difference between the changes that we choose to make versus the changes that are made upon us and a relationship between how we can shift that in order to make changes positive?

curtis_bateman:
Yes. Oh, you're digging right into a really key point here, which I love. So when we go through a change and we choose it ourselves, we've generally given it enough time and energy and thought to say, I choose to do this because I want the outcome it will lead to. So if we're here and the outcome's here, we're really excited about the outcome. We don't always think about or prepare for what's in the middle. So even with the change that we ourselves, we still have to traverse that no man's land. And that has some difficult moments in it. But because we've chosen the change, we can see there's value and purpose in it. So we're willing to walk through the difficulty. When the change is imposed on us, meaning an organization, a leader, or any other number of contexts where we feel like the change is really pushed on us, that no man's land that we have to walk through, that period of uncertainty, becomes really challenging for us because the future state, the vision of why we're doing it, may not be as clear. So it's less inspiring or motivating to work through the difficulties. So now to bring it together and answer that one really important part of your question, you know, is there something we can do about it? Well, there is, because as we start to realize, Hey, there's this really predict a predictable pattern that we're going through with change. Personal, professional work, neighborhood, community, school, whatever it is. And if we realize that, and we realize there's some key mindsets and actions we can take, then we move away from having to feel like it's done to us to start to understand where we can assert some control in the process. And it doesn't take us from terrible to perfect. It takes us from, I think I can do some things about this. percent or 30 percent or 50 percent better, but because we're asserting what we feel is a little bit of control, it starts to change the paradigm and the dynamics and it improves the the circumstance for us.

scott:
I love that. And it reminds me a little bit of that sort of victimhood mentality versus that high performance mentality, that proactive way of like, what can we control and how can we actually, you know, build the agency within ourselves to make changes. Do you think that there's more of a higher impact or a higher level of success in either making change from going towards pleasure versus away from fear and pain?

curtis_bateman:
Pain and pain. Well, both create change context for us. I mean, it's the easy answers to say moving towards something we like is definitely a better situation. I don't know that that always leads to a better outcome. Sometimes the struggle towards moving away from pain, losing a job or having a family member that passes away, really painful circumstance that causes us to change. If engaged in well, they can lead to remarkable discoveries about self and about performance and about outcomes that I think if you talk to people that have wandered that path or lived that journey, they won't trade it because of what they've learned and gained from it. So I think there's an easy answer and there's a complex answer because some of the pain that drive us through change aren't pleasant. They're really not pleasant. And so what I don't want to be is trite and minimize the pain experiences that people feel. What I do want to do is to say, hey, if you understand that there is a predictable pattern and you just engage in a few things that can help you start to reassert control, you can get to good and even better through the process.

scott:
And you mentioned a couple of times this predictable pattern.

curtis_bateman:
Yes.

scott:
What is that?

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, so we call this, we happily named this the change model years and years ago. And some business partners and I looked and looked and looked at all of the organizations and leaders we were working with that were going through change. And we started to map out what they were experiencing. And you know, a map is valuable, depending on your need at a certain If your GPS is zoomed out to the whole of a country and you're trying to figure out which street to turn on, it's not a very good representation. And so we've tried to create the change model at a level of zoom that fits most or almost all change experiences, but it's abstract enough to give you permission to explore and discover. So what we came up with, and we've tested it in thousands of circumstances. Most of us live in what we call a zone of status quo. The day-to-day world is predictable. We know what to expect. It feels comfortable. It matches how our brains like to work in terms of the number of decisions we have to make or the challenge. At some point in the zone of status quo, we reach the moment where a change gets introduced by choice or through external circumstances. And when that happens, we enter a zone of disruption. Why disruption? us out of what we expect and know and understand. And usually we find ourselves facing at least three questions. What is it that's really changing? Why is it changing? What's the circumstance that led to the change? And the most important one, what's the impact on me? What does it really mean to me? And learning how to get answers to those questions while you're in this really disruptive state is a skill. And it's, it's, there's some tools and some ways that we can help with But it's a skill. And as you start to get clarity with that, then you reach the point that we call the point of decision. It's really the point in who moved my cheese, where the characters make this breakthrough. And that was the focus of that book, this little kernel, right in the middle of the change process. So we're saying, how do we approach that decision of the change could be good for me, I'm gonna work on it, or I'm gonna opt out this change isn't going to work for me. I'm gonna leave a team, I'm going to move, whatever it is I'm gonna do. Once we move through that point of decision, we started to make choices that say, I'm going to engage and work on the change becoming meaningful and valuable. And we call that the zone of adoption. We're adopting the change. We're discovering how to work, live, act, behave in that new context. And if that goes well, and we realize along the way there are other things we didn't even anticipate that could create value for us, where we say, how could we innovate because of this change? How could this lead to even more and better than we anticipated? And so this map, there's some tools that say, how do I tell where I am? And based on where I am, what can I do? And I do all of that so I can decrease the negative impact and start to maximize the benefit that comes from the change. And that can lead to some remarkable performance during the change process, some remarkable discovery. about self and about new ways of doing things. In each of those zones what we're doing is we're just looking at what are we thinking, what are we feeling, and what could we be doing or what are we doing right now. It helps us identify where we are and where we can go with it. So change model, that's what it is.

scott:
I love that. I like it. As you were talking about that and you mentioned about the skills that we can build as we go through this model in order to prepare ourselves and get ourselves through to the next zone. Being a pilot, I'm kind of thinking a lot of the stuff that we do in the quote unquote chaos is normally pre-briefed, pre-rehearsed, done,

curtis_bateman:
Mm-hmm

scott:
rets thousands of times, you know. Can we be proactive before changes even come into our lives? proactive and build any of these skills before that we're actually in the trenches and we actually need to make that change.

curtis_bateman:
We can, we absolutely can. So in that first zone, the zone of status quo, one of the skills we talk about is how do you anticipate change? So a story from the book that we're releasing here in three weeks that I told about teaching one of my kids to drive. And I thought, oh, this kid's pretty coordinated. It'll be pretty straightforward. And so we were out on a lonely road in Colorado near Mesa Verde. And I said, all right, buddy, why don't you wheel. And he jumped behind the wheel and we pulled out onto this highway. And he he struggled to figure out how to take all the inputs that were coming his way and deal with them. And so my wife wisely said from the backseat, hey, why don't you pull over and then have me drive and just talk him through what I'm doing. And so as I started to drive I said okay here's what I'm checking, here's what I'm doing, here's where I'm looking. And so I said I'm checking the mirror now, I'm so that he could get a sense of all of these things that go on while I'm driving. Because it feels pretty mundane if you've been driving for a long time and somebody's watching, like, oh, nothing big's going on. And as I pulled into a city, a little town, city's a wrong word in this part of the country, a little town, I mentioned that how far ahead I was glancing, and I'm looking for kids playing in a yard, are they going to sprint out to chase a ball? And I'm looking for a car reversing out of their driveway. is starting to anticipate what they might be doing so I could take actions now. And we have these types of skills in our life. We just haven't chosen to develop them as a change capability. So as we start to use this idea of anticipating change and looking ahead at all the places where we might get indicators of change, then we're less surprised. And if a change is coming that feels really We have more lead time to choose what can I do about it, how can I prepare? And that moment where we start to prepare, fear goes down, capability goes up, and then when the change arrives on us or doesn't, we've started to make some choices that give us a sense of more control versus less control. So just like you're saying, we're anticipating and programming ourselves to be ready for what's coming our way.

scott:
of that. And one of the experiences that I've had, certainly when the pandemic happened, and it sort of wobbled a very, very stable career that was, you know, set to look after me for the rest of my life, for

curtis_bateman:
Yeah.

scott:
instance.

curtis_bateman:
Yeah.

scott:
And I saw a lot of my colleagues that were maybe slightly less equipped, because they'd only thought of themselves as pilots, as doctors, as army officers, you know, these really strong, rigid identities. How much does identity play in our ability to change? Because I know that I talked recently about psychological flexibility and the importance of how easy we are to sort of not stay locked into a single self-concept. But how much of a factor is that identity? And what can we do to sort of start flexing that or changing that so that we can actually be ready for change?

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think if you look at the world, if you look at people at large, there are so many different frameworks for characterizing people, personalities, behavior attributes. And if you follow that line of thinking, people would feel pretty trapped into, well, this is just the way I am. And I hear people say that to me, oh, this is just the way I am. At one level, that's true. But it also starts to walk away from the idea of choice, which bothers me a lot. And so I do think there's some onboard wiring, some onboard experience bias, did you grow up in what kind of family circumstance, what kind of socioeconomic circumstance, all of those things give us lenses and biases through which we view the world. And so I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. Part of what we tried to do with the change model was to say, great, bring yourself at whatever starting point you are and recognize that if you can understand this predictable pattern that happens to everybody, we all experience with the change, we experience it with the change. And so recognize that there's a pattern, it's not as crazy and unexpected or unique as you might think, let's show you the pattern. can overlay on that just some really easy to use practical skills then no matter what your starting point is we're going to help you be better than you were. Now if somebody has a personality or a propensity that's mature and capable and and looks at these things as opportunity because life's taught them that and they they like to embrace you they might move further along that skill spectrum but eliminate anybody, anyone, wherever their starting point is, if they'll just actively work on some of these change skills, we'll get better from it. And from my perspective, if you could get 30% better with changes that you experienced, Scott, and maybe the next one, you're 40%, but the frontline worker that I've worked with, that feels like, wow, I'm 10% better. I'm thrilled for you. You're better

scott:
Mm.

curtis_bateman:
than you were, and hopefully it helps you see the possibility of getting better for future change. changes. So I hope, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's kind of been our viewpoint on it as we've developed our approach and methodology.

scott:
Yeah, that's great. I wonder if there's any more skills that you've seen come up time and time again that are absolutely essential for successfully being able to work through the model.

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, I talked about one earlier, but I'll give it a name. When I talked about when we make an individual change, we tend to see where the change could take us. So we might call that vision or painting a picture of the future. You know, there's lots of different words that people use. But when we do that for ourselves, the outcome creates within us a willingness to go through the difficulties of change. And so, at a really basic level, if I choose to move to a new house, well then there's something about that house that I must like or want. It's closer to a school or it's closer to my job or it's newer and nicer or it fits within my price range. You still have to go through the process of moving home, packing up everything, all the work of clearing it out, selling it, the transaction cost, all of those things you still have to traverse. Because you've made the choice and you can see the benefits for you, it gives you this motivation. Shift that now to a circumstance where somebody imposes a change on you. So think of lots of them. Maybe there's a school district redistricting and it's going to send your kids to a different school. Maybe at work there's a change in the org structure. You've got a different boss. You know, the list goes on and on. Everybody could name 10 quickly off the top of their head. of vision to help you through the change. As you start to look at the change and understand what's changing and why, especially in a context where it's being imposed on you, as you start to understand the why, if there's some real clarity around the why, you can start to form a picture and a vision of what the change could bring. And then as you define how it could be a good thing for you, it starts to paint that vision you through the rest of the process. And it takes practice, right? It takes a lot of practice, but it can become a real skill. And when you develop it as a skill, it allows you to instantly shift gears and say, I wonder what this could lead to that could be fantastic. Paint that picture, and then it will give you capability to traverse the difficult part of the change.

scott:
amazing. And what if you're, I know I'm surrounded by so many cynical people. And I guess being in an industry, there's a book called industries of the future. And there was a trend that they picked out that said that a lot of the companies in the future are going to be run by accountants. And certainly I see a lot of, you know, chief marketing or finance officers going into CEO roles and being the decision makers and certainly in aviation as well. be run through the finance department before any change is even made. Like how can, first of all, what's your experience of that dynamic? Is that something that's actually trending? Um, or is that just, you know, the cynics point of view? Um, and if so, how can we sort of maybe start to measure the impact of investing in people, um, during times of change, rather than always looking at the cost of things?

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, I smile. So first of all, a shout out to all accountants in the world. We love you.

scott:
Ha ha ha.

curtis_bateman:
You know, anytime there's anybody prognosticating about these macroeconomic trends and what's going to be, I always think from where we are to what they're saying, the reality is probably somewhere in the middle. And, you know, so why might that be the case? Why might accountants be playing a more active role? Well, there's a lot of economic uncertainty right now. but there isn't always. Companies are trying to mitigate risk. And so as they try to mitigate risk, finance and accounting people are key to that. And so you can see some correction where that might be the case. But if I'm thinking about it through a change lens, I'm saying, well, that's interesting. This is a pattern that occurs periodically with economic ups and downs. How good is my financial literacy? What is it that I understand? and don't understand that would allow me to communicate and work in that environment in a more effective way. That doesn't take a lot of time to improve those skills, but there I am anticipating change thinking I wonder what this would be. What if I were more conversant this way? Could I be more effective in my role working with finance and still accomplishing the outcomes I need? So that's that idea of anticipating change. The second part of your question was it's a people process question, right? And should we be investing in people? Well, the data shows that during times of uncertainty, investing and developing people, no matter where we invest in them, we increase employee retention. We increase employee engagement. So I would argue there's always a reason to invest in developing our people. When it comes to change, if we invest in developing change capability and maybe even moving towards change competency within our people and our organization, My question, my hypothesis is, does that allow us to create a more agile, flexible, responsive, faster moving group of people that can adapt to whatever the changes are when they show up in reality? And I think that's true. I think organizations that develop a change muscle and a change competency by investing in and developing their people can win in the long term because of that. even in the short term, because change is ever present. You know, when I'm in front of a group of people and I say, how many people feel like they're experiencing more change now than ever before? Every single hand goes up. And when I ask, do you anticipate this pace of change to slow down, nobody does. And I think that just represents the reality we live in. There's a very complex, interconnected, technology-driven world we live in. Change is here to stay. work with our people, invest in them, and develop the proficiency and the capability to be really more effective at change. So the other part of that question is the process part of the question. And some people would say, well, we just manage our processes, and where you run into risk with that approach to leading change, excuse me, it's important to manage that well. And I'm a full believer that process and project management really is a big part of the process. to change is important. But if you do that at the expense of your people coming on the journey, you're only going to contribute to the statistic I stated earlier, which says 70% of change initiatives fail to reach their intended outcome, because you haven't captured the hearts and minds of your people and brought them on the engagement journey needed for them to help you make the change successful.

scott:
That almost sounds like your, the requirements for successful change is almost like a curiosity

curtis_bateman:
Thank you. Thank you.

scott:
and acceptance as opposed to like an emotional response which I guess is associated with a lot of changes that we have, right?

curtis_bateman:
Yeah. Yeah, I like the word you use curiosity there. By default, as human beings, when a change starts, we're going to have an emotional reaction. In the book, we talk about five really common emotional reactions. Move. I'm energized. I want to do something with it. Minimize. Hey, I've been down this road before these changes usually don't stick. I'll do the least amount possible. Wait. Yeah, I've watched this movie. I know how it ends. I'm just going to because we'll go back to the way things used to be. And then we have Resist, who really pushes back and says, I'm not sure this is a smart change. And they've got reasons for it. And so they resist the change. And then we have what we affectionately call the quit twins, quit and quits. One quits and leaves what the organization or the team's doing. The other one quits and stays. Quiet quitting has been the language used recently to talk about that. So there will be emotional. and emotional reaction. So I have, I have, I guess, two observations about that. What if you could choose the reaction? So you chose the reaction that's best suited to the change that's been introduced. Could you do that? And if you could do that, what, what would it mean in terms of creating benefit for you and the change process? And so once, once you've, once you've approached it that way and realized, hey, it's normal, I'm human, I am gonna have a reaction. Okay, I have that reaction. what could I adjust in my thinking and paradigm? And that allows you to move into that state that you talked about earlier, Scott, which is where can I be proactive and make choice rather than reactive?

scott:
I see so many people, certainly that I coach, that are highly capable people, young leaders, so much potential. And yet, I guess they get into this stage where they realize that either the trajectory that they're on or the environment that they're in, they can't change.

curtis_bateman:
Mm.

scott:
I had somebody talk about the fact that he realized that he wasn't in a meritocracy anymore. It was a different game. And he really struggled with that. And I guess that's where people either disengage and quit, like you said or look for an out. In that sort of scenario, is there any other option?

curtis_bateman:
Well, this is right at the very bottom and middle part of the change process. We call it the point of decision. And obviously you always have the option to try and influence the organization through, you know, whatever means you have at your disposal. But I would say this, actually let me tell you a story from my time with Dr. Johnson, because there's a statement in his book that really summarizes this moment. I was thinking that I wanted to start my own business, yet I was collaborating with Dr. Johnson and him of my cheese. And I was really struggling with what should I do? I felt stuck. I liked the work I was doing, but I wanted to own my own business, highly risky. And so in the parable, whom of my cheese, there's a question that gets asked by one of the characters and it says, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And the question invites you to not, ignore fear. It just says, hey, if you weren't afraid, just set fear right here and say, if that really weren't a factor, what would I do or what could I do? And that moment is a moment of real clarity, especially for me in that moment. I thought, I would just buy the business from this guy and keep working with him. So I approached him and I used some of his own change language on him and it ended up leading to a really rewarding action for him and for me, where it created a third alternative. And I suppose that's the question you're asking, how do we create third alternatives? Well, one of the ways I know about to do that is to set aside the fear and the frustration and try and look at what could I do if I weren't trapped? What could I do if I weren't afraid? What could I do if I weren't whatever? Put your own word in there and ask yourself that question. could I, would I, or should I do? And if you allow yourself to engage in that without the burden of the obstacle, it can lead to third alternatives. That's where you're gonna discover alternatives. And that might challenge your courage. It might challenge a lot of things, but it does give you a third alternative. I'm gonna go ahead and do a third alternative.

scott:
that. That's a great answer actually. There's one other thing that I've seen hold people back from change in my own experience and that's sunk costs. And I think this goes for businesses as well, right? Businesses go all in on an idea. It doesn't quite work out. And instead of just saying, you know, we've hit the point at which we've given it a chance it's not worked. They certainly a lot with my mates as well, you know, they spent 100,000 pounds on flight training, they spent five years, six years, seven years training and doing all the right things in order to attain this job. And then it's not as they expected, it's not giving them what they need. But they still remain stuck and resistant to change because there's a there's almost an expectation or an entitlement there that they should be getting paid back

curtis_bateman:
Yeah.

scott:
right now.

curtis_bateman:
Yep. This is such a great question. And I wished more individuals asked it to themselves. I think businesses get to that point. But the answer from my perspective is the same for both. So I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the change model because there's a shape to it that I want to describe. So if you imagine a flat line coming out during the zone of status quo, and then when the change is introduced, The line starts to go down and it makes this U shape as it and then it comes back up as you move through disruption, adoption and innovation. Here's what happens from a change perspective. Once you've introduced the change, so I'm going to flight school, I'm going to spend $100,000, I'm going to go to flight school, you actually have introduced a change, you're putting yourself in a new circumstance and you're working through that. Well that means you've come off this into the zone of disruption. And the adoption process is working your way through that training and back into a place where that produces value for you. And that's in the zone of adoption as you develop the skills as a pilot, and you apply those skills and then you start to make money from it, and then you pay back all of the cost you have with it. If you get stuck in the bottom part of that journey, and that line just keeps going flat at a lower level of outcome, you stay there, that whole U shaped part of the dip is just cost. And I've seen this with organizations, they'll make a change and they don't figure out a climb back up out of the results part of the dip. And so they produce a lower result. If I've been to airline pilot school or training and I never get back out of it, all I've done is incurred the cost of the training and I'm stuck at that new lower level of result. And if you do that, that's a permanent cost created by the change. What we're really looking for is to move through that U shape part of the curve as quickly as possible, minimize cost, and get to the part where the curve keeps going up and to the right where all of the benefit come from. Because if the benefit outweighs the dip in the change process, then you've created a return on your investment for that change, both personal or organizational. that to individuals are the saying, oh, I just don't, I've spent all this money on it. The question is what's within my control and influence to get out of this lower level of results and recover from the cost of change? And if I can't, if I don't see a way forward to it, then we have to challenge ourselves to say, okay, what could I do differently now? What's a different course of action I could that

scott:
Mm-hmm.

curtis_bateman:
you just stuck with all the costs.

scott:
And if we were to apply this to say your son, when he goes on to further education that's expensive, but maybe he doesn't know what he wants to do. So there's obviously an upfront cost, but yet we don't know what the results are. How are you having that discussion with him so that he makes a decision that's actually more empowering and impactful for him? And so I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point.

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, yep. Well, this could get into a whole curta speech on education.

scott:
Thank you.

curtis_bateman:
So

scott:
Bye.

curtis_bateman:
I won't go down that road. Let me talk about the vision part of it. What's the vision of school, training, maybe apprenticeships, any one of those things where we would invest time, right? We would incur costs, either financial or opportunity costs by the use of our time. Well, the vision I would tell my son, I have one getting ready to start university. this fall is you're working to expand your capability and your thought processes and your skills, intellectual skills, so that you can produce at a level different than you can right now. So does that directly align with I have a degree in marketing and I'm not finding the kind of success or reward I want in marketing? Well, if you've defined your journey my outcome is I want to be in marketing, then that could be quite limiting. If you've defined it as in my journey through my education, my apprenticeship training, you know, whatever the case might be, my certification. What have I done to improve my ability to think, act, and behave, and to learn from that in a way that I can apply it, even if it ends up not being exactly where I thought I might apply it? So part of it's framing the vision of what you're trying to do. And sometimes, there's a lot of work around fixed mindsets. You've read the book from Carol Dweck as well. And if you get into the fixed mindset, then you're kind of stuck on that. You're thinking, oh, well, then I my living doing this. And I would say, wait a minute, you need a lot more flexibility in your mindset to say, what has that enabled me to do? Or what have I learned that's helped me refine my interests so I could pursue that?

scott:
Thank you.

curtis_bateman:
And it's not easy, right? It's hard for youngsters, anybody in today's day and age to get started. And it's even hard from some of the older people with that. But if we can try and reframe it, so we're thinking about what is the experience to allow and what has it constrained me towards?

scott:
Amazing. And are there any other sort of final notes of point about the model that people need to be aware of? In order to sort of, I don't know, try to navigate change in a way that is slightly more impactful, slightly more empowering to them rather than having to react to someone else's whim.

curtis_bateman:
Well, I think if I were saying just a few summary comments, one, we're all human. We all experience change and it has an emotional starting point for all of us. The more we can do to prepare for it, like we've talked about, we've talked about one idea today to prepare for it, the more we can do to anticipate and prepare, rather than sit comfortably and idly by waiting for the next change to just emerge on the horizon. some control. And as humans, you know, we've always said change imposed is change opposed. And so when we feel like it's being imposed on us, our natural reaction is to push back. So the more we can do to kind of tear down that idea, the more we give ourselves possibilities. I don't think there's a silver bullet, but there are some really, really nice, easily learnable things you can do. So it. Get curious about it. Try and figure out why did that change go well? Why didn't it go well? And learn to get better from it rather than just endure it because the next change is inevitably right over the horizon. One of the stories in the book, one of my co-authors talks about change comes in waves and what the frequency of those waves is might be different at different times in our life, but it's going to keep happening. So rather than hope and wait and endure, figure out how to be proactive and develop the capability to through the change and I think it will create a different experience and trajectory for people, leaders and individuals as they as they start to develop those capabilities.

scott:
Curtis, thank you so much for that. I definitely need to read the book now. I've been trying to get my hands on a free copy pre-published, but I didn't

curtis_bateman:
Ha ha

scott:
manage

curtis_bateman:
ha ha!

scott:
to get it done. So can you tell us where to go to get a copy of the book or pre-order, I guess,

curtis_bateman:
Yep.

scott:
at this stage?

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, thank you for that. So it's I'll show it to you. The listeners won't see it. So here's what it looks like. It's on Amazon. It's called Change, How to Turn Uncertainty into Opportunity. And it's on Amazon right now. You can pre-order it. The audio version of it is available for pre-order. Both are out on April 18th. We just got them into the warehouse this week at work. So it's coming soon, three weeks. best place but it will be in bookstores and it will be in airport bookstores from the 18th onward.

scott:
be in the links in the show notes as well by that stage as well I'd say.

curtis_bateman:
Perfect.

scott:
So just click on the links in the show notes. Before we go Curtis, quick fire round for you. Four quick questions for you just to finish off. The first

curtis_bateman:
Okay.

scott:
one is one piece of advice you would tell your younger self before starting out, maybe in the paradigm of change.

curtis_bateman:
Yet, don't be so darn limited in your thinking. Get curious and explore what can come from the curiosity.

scott:
one mantra or belief that has enabled your high performance life.

curtis_bateman:
Hmm. This is probably going to sound funny, but be kind to people. Just be kind to people around you. I think it opens up opportunities when you're kind to people you lead, kind to people you interact with. The universal send back dividend your way.

scott:
of that. I actually have the opposite one which is like expect kindness from other people, like expect everybody to be good, you know, because I

curtis_bateman:
Yeah.

scott:
think a lot of the time we're walking around and people have their guard up too much and their experience of what's going on around them is kind of warped because of that.

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, I often say just extend trust until people prove they can't be proven trustworthy, right? You just look for the good in people. You know, I think the world at large sends out a lot of negative energy, but I travel all over the world into your point, Scott. People are good. People are kind. They're generous. They really, really are fantastic. So expect it. Look for it because it's there.

scott:
Awesome. One ingredient or habit that has contributed to your success the most.

curtis_bateman:
Mmm. One ingredient or habit, I would say

scott:
Maybe

curtis_bateman:
hard

scott:
even one that's

curtis_bateman:
work.

scott:
contributed to successful change.

curtis_bateman:
Yeah, hard work would probably apply

scott:
Thank

curtis_bateman:
to both.

scott:
you. Bye.

curtis_bateman:
I just think there is an element of, you know, we live in a world where we have so much richness and bounty around us for the most part. I would say that you still have to work hard. Things require some energy and effort and be willing to put in the hard yards to accomplish what you want. And that's what I think. I think that's the most important thing. I think that's the most important thing. I think that's the most important thing.

scott:
Nice. And finally, what should go to tutor artist for a tough day?

curtis_bateman:
Oh,

scott:
What gets

curtis_bateman:
go

scott:
you in the

curtis_bateman:
to...

scott:
zone?

curtis_bateman:
Can I list an 80s band or is that

scott:
You

curtis_bateman:
bad?

scott:
absolutely can.

curtis_bateman:
Oh,

scott:
No,

curtis_bateman:
good.

scott:
we've had older bands and 80s bands.

curtis_bateman:
Oh, good. Good. I'll list. Oh, my goodness. I love Imagine Dragons. That's not an 80s band, but I love Imagine Dragons and I love the cars from the 80s. Those are two that I love to listen to. Good day or bad day.