 Hello, hello. Welcome, everybody. I should be a little bit, not speak too loud. Good morning, thank you very much for being here. We're very happy to welcome you in Gaelstein. Just very briefly, today we're going to have two talks in the morning, then there's, Mita Gessen, lunch, thank you. Then we have some lightning talks and then another two sessions after the coffee break. Today, I have for you a very special guest. She is Fjord Van Hummel. She is the head of marketing at Yoast. We're very happy to have her here. She's going to talk about failing forward lessons learned in change management so that we can use changes and opportunity to grow. So please, oh, one important thing that I need to say. She has been in a lot of work camps. Her first talk in a work camp. So please give a big round of applause for Flori. Thank you. Wow, so really happy to be here. I think you all chose the right room to be in and that's not because of my talk. Well, maybe also because of my talk, but I think the temperature is way better than over there. So that's already a plus, got that going for me. Hi, everyone. I'm really happy to see that you all take the effort to come and listen to my talk. So before we start, I want you all to think about a complex change that you went through within your work and that had some issues along the way because I think imagining a complex change that you went through will help you understand my talk better and will also help you implement it, implement the tips I'm giving in this talk. So before we dive in, I would like to introduce myself. As Maria already said, I'm the Director of Marketing at Joost and before that, I worked at a marketing agency where a lot of the examples are also from that I will be talking about today. And at every place I worked, I experienced change. Wow. Are we good? Yeah, exactly. Good morning. I experienced change that didn't work. So let's dive into that a bit more. Because we've all been there, complex changes at our work, whether it was changing to a new system, a new working methods or maybe even a complete reorganization. We all know changes are hard and people make mistakes along the way. So why aren't we using these mistakes to our advantage? In this talk, I will show you a framework for complex change management. In this next 30 to 45 minutes, I'll talk about the five key areas which affect success. So you can all start failing forward as well. And I'll be doing this by using a framework because frameworks are often based on real-life research and that means that the foundations are true. So I'll be doing that in this talk as well. And for this talk, I'd like to look at the lipid nostril model for complex change management. And it's a very powerful tool that provides guidance on the road of managing complex change. And the model has five elements. It's vision, skills, incentives, resources and an action plan. And as you can see in this nice overview right here, if you do all the things right, you'll achieve success. If you have one of the elements missing, well, that might have some impact on the people that are experiencing the change. But not to worry. In this talk, we'll talk about failing forward. So I will actually tell you how to use this to your advantage. So let's dive into the first element, vision. Every journey of change begins with a destination in mind. This is the vision. It's a super important thing for your change management process. It means that you should think about what the future should look like when your change has been successfully implemented. And a clear, defined vision provides a sense of direction. It creates purpose and it fosters alignment. In summary, it's actually the North Star guiding you towards your unified goal. But what happens when we don't have a clear vision? People will be confused. And this can lead to ambiguity, disagreement, a lack of direction, and ultimately a stagnation of the change process. But having this shared vision isn't always easy because a lot of people don't really know why they have to move because the status quo is actually good enough. So let's dive into an example. I remember when the previous company I worked at bought another company. Both companies were rather small and because I was at the buying company, we actually knew why we were buying the other ones. And we didn't really expect this change to be so impactful because the companies were rather similar. We had similar things we offered as an agency. So we were actually pretty confident about this change. However, when the day came that both of the companies were working together, we noticed a lot of confusion within the other team because, well, they didn't even got the explanation why they were bought and why they had to work with us all of a sudden. So what did we do to change that? Instead of just trying to work together, we actually went into a room together and started talking. I know this sounds like an obvious thing to do, but I see some of you smiling. So I also know that it's not something that everyone always does, like just get into that room together and actually ask, like, what do you think of this change and where do you see us going? Where can we actually find our strains together and work together? And that actually helped in this case. So it was really nice to take a better look at each other and get to know each other. And in this case, although it was really confusing for a part of the group, this actually was a learning opportunity to get actually on the same page. And it was a chance to learn about the team's perspectives, understand their aspirations, concerns and expectations. In summary, the journey towards a clear shared vision might leave you with some mistakes, but each one is an opportunity for growth and reviving. These failures help you understand your team better, improve your communication, create a compelling narrative and instill a sense of urgency. So that's what I would like to take away from this first element. The second one is skills. And having a vision without skills doesn't really get the people going. And if I'm talking about skills, I actually mean the collective abilities and expertise that are needed to implement the vision of this change. Without the right skills, your change is just a theoretical concept, something you really want, but can really achieve. And this lack of skills can cause anxiety when in your team and then again, stalling the change process in the end. And in the context of change management, skills aren't just about the things we can do at the moment, but they're also about our capacity to adapt, learning new things and unlearn what no longer serves us. And this transition towards a new way of working, a new system or a new culture requires us to embrace new skills and let go of the old ones. We all know this isn't easy. And failing forward is to me the only way here. One of the times in my career where I definitely lacked skills in change management was when we switched from one project management system to another. We didn't really have the skills to bring this plan to action. And although we really wanted to use the new system and we read the website and saw like, okay, this really has the things we need, we didn't really know how to use it. So people within the company felt like they weren't in control of their tasks anymore. They had struggling finding their own projects and actually having a worse time than before. So what did we do? Well, we started doing it anyway. And that meant that absolutely some things broke along the way and we lost some of the data, which I wouldn't really recommend. But because of this anxiety we all felt, it actually led us to really reflect and to see what was missing, which things we couldn't do. It helped us actually focus on, okay, this is like the biggest blocker at the moment. So this is the thing that we should be focusing on right now. And we discovered that we just needed some stuff like breaking down into smaller pieces and it made us help finding the gaps in our knowledge. So that actually, in that way, Filio actually was our guide to help us improve along the way. And yes, in the end, we switched to the new system and everyone was happy with it. And in this specific example, I actually learned that one of the most important skills to develop for everyone is having a growth mindset. And a growth mindset is actually the belief that one's abilities and intelligence are can be developed with effort, persistence and dedication. People with a growth mindset can get better at something by dedicating time and effort to it. They see challenges as an opportunity to grow and embrace learning from their mistakes and are not discouraged by failure. They believe that with hard work, they can improve their skills and knowledge. Of course, there are multiple ways to teach yourself to have a growth mindset, such as embracing failure to start with or learning from criticism. However, as a leader or a team member or someone who works with other people, you are maybe very likely to be motivated to develop that growth mindset. I think you are because, well, you're in this talk, so you're at least curious. But at the same time, you might encounter people that aren't that motivated. So what can you do? Some of my favorite examples to actually create this growth mindset are, first of all, to model a growth mindset. And that's like demonstrating a growth mindset by your own actions and attitudes. So that means showing that you value learning and improvement, accept and learn from your mistakes and also saying out loud, right? If you're doing something wrong or something didn't go as planned and embrace challenges. So be positive about the things you're encountering and don't be ashamed. And I know that's like something that takes practice as well, but there again, the growth mindset comes in handy. The second thing is to use the power of language. And I cannot stress enough how important this point is. So what do I mean by the power of language? I think like using growth-oriented language in your language like towards yourself but also towards other people really helps you to actually believe the things you're saying as well because the mind is a very powerful tool. So what if we're talking about something you cannot do at the moment? I'm not gonna say to you, well, you can do this. I'm gonna say you can do this yet but in the future with some practice you can. So that's something how you can actually like it's a really simple example of how you can show people well, you can learn, you can develop and there is a way forward. And the last thing I'd like to promote is making mistakes as a learning opportunity because I already said like you should admit your own mistakes you should lead by example but how can you do this if you're for example working at a company? So one of the things that I would suggest is setting up a weekly or monthly meeting where you're actually telling each other like what went wrong this month without saying, well, you didn't do well as a person or you just failed in doing it tasks or we want to see where the challenges lie and how we can improve. And by just like making that something that's regular that's normal, that's part of the process it's way easier for people to actually reflect look at their own mistakes and speak up at those as well and therefore grow and learn as a group. And of course there are multiple ways how you can get people into growth mindset and these are just like my three favorite examples as I think you can start doing those today. And actually advocating this growth mindset will help people open their minds and help them grow as well. So I really like this way of thinking about it. Unfortunately, of course, that's not something we can achieve overnight. So just focus on these little steps first and then go take the next step. So of course the path toward learning a new skill isn't easy and it requires this culture that embraces failure and sees it as an opportunity for learning and innovation and that also fosters resilience, psychological safety and growth. But each failure is a lesson in patients in innovation and in persistence and that brings you one step closer to actually get that team ready for a new change. The third incentive of the third pillar of the Lipid Nostrum Model is incentives. And these are the motivators or drivers that inspire individuals and teams to actually go towards, go like take the next step in the change process. And incentives can actually be this powerful catalyst that actually like helps speed up your change process even more. And they nudge people out of their comfort zones and encourage them again to embrace change. Without suitable incentives, resistance and opposition to change are likely to emerge. And when I talk incentives, the first thing that often comes to mind to most people are monetary rewards. Well, we're all within WordPress so we know that isn't the only thing that actually helps us keep going. And of course financial incentives can be very effective but they're not the only motivators or necessarily the most powerful ones. In fact, studies even show that non-monetary rewards like recognition or a sense of accomplishment and growth opportunities can even be more motivating than those financial rewards. And I think like one of the really hard things in change is overcoming resistance. And this resistance after comes from fear, fear of the unknown, fear of failure or fear for additional work, for example. And this is where incentives and of course also the occasional failure in finding out what those incentives are become crucial. So what happens if you actually chose a wrong incentive? You notice that your team isn't motivated at all. They don't want to change, they just want to stay exactly where they are. Well, the answer is again, pretty simple. You'll just try something else. And by keep on experimenting, you'll gain insights into what your team drives, what your team wants. And you can tailor these incentives to actually be more meaningful so that also helps you of course in your next change. When I worked at the marketing agency, one of the customers I had made software, very specific software for the public environment. Do you know these little sweeping cars, for example, or the trucks that drive the bins out on the streets? They made software for the drivers. So the drivers actually knew where to go and which bins to empty and which streets to clean. When building a campaign for these drivers, we first focused this campaign on being more efficient because in the end, that was the incentive for the company that actually bought the software and paid for it. But the drivers, so the people that actually had to work with the software, well, they didn't care about saving time. They just came to their job, did the work, had fun with their colleagues, and they went home. So the campaign to actually make the drivers to ditch their paper map and start working with our software didn't really work. So I had to do something else because the drivers were still using their paper maps and I thought, well, they need to use the software, what to do next. So I went talking to the drivers and I asked about their fears about what they didn't like about the software and it turned out they were a bit scared of being controlled too much and they didn't really know how to use it because a lot of these drivers were already like in this job for a very long time and they were so used to actually using that paper map and to their old habits. So they weren't really motivated to change because they got the work done right. So after many conversations, I decided to pivot the campaign towards the fun part of the software because playing it actually or using it actually made you feel like playing Pac-Man in real life. So the software was made really fun and interactive and it turned out that this narrative actually worked for them because it actually added something to their working day. It was an extra element and it made their work way more fun. The other thing I focused on was them having less administrative tasks. So that's something they actually lost right now. So they have more fun in their working day and didn't have to like draw everything on the paper map again. And this actually worked. So this example really shows that it's not always about money or being more efficient like the obvious things we mostly think about. Sometimes it just can be about reducing something negative like in this example, the administrative tasks or in other cases, stress, workload or confusion. But again, as I also told here, there's a learning curve involved and what works for one team member of course might not work for the other. So that's why it's always good to focus on multiple incentives is if you're talking to a bigger group of people. And each failure like the example here shows you which step you can take next and helps you to understand your team or the people you're talking to better. And you can also think about smaller things to do. I mean, this example might be pretty big because switching from a paper map to a software system is of course a big change. But if you're for example, leading a team, you can also give a team member an afternoon off after they've finished a really complex task because that can also get them motivated again in feeling recognized and knowing that if they work really hard, they get something in return. But it can also just say, well, you did a really nice job and publicly acknowledging someone's work in front of a group or investing, for example, in a great piece of software. And in summary, I think incentives are actually crucial in facilitating change and the failure encountered in this journey is just as important because, well, we can't really read each other's mind, right? So again, we have to talk to each other, have to find out what works and what doesn't. And of course, in the first place, you can make some assumptions and like maybe you're right. But if you see that your team is just not motivated at all, make sure to go talk to them and see what works. All right, I'm glad to see you're all here. We're at the stage where we know that we need a clear and communicated vision. We need skills and a growth mindset to actually make that change happen. And we know that what we need to know, what our incentives our team has. And this actually leaves us with two more elements for successful change management, the resources and the action plan. If I'm referring to resources, I mean the various tools, materials, technologies and of course, the human resources that are necessary to implement the change. And without these adequate resources, the change process can stop resulting in a lot of frustration among your team. And the term resources can include tangible resources like software, hardware and office space. But it can also include funding and intangible resources like time, knowledge and human effort. And using all of these resources in the right way is a crucial expect. And just like mentioning these groups, I already know like it's a big thing, right? It's really hard to get all these things right just like in the first go. So let's dive into an example. We decided to focus on a new type of content strategy but we didn't really want to stop the old way of doing things because that actually worked for us as well. And we weren't really sure about the new content strategy and how it would work for us. So this led to some problems with time management because the team had to do way too much into little time. It was frustrated and people didn't really do both of their jobs right because it was just way too much. So it wasn't really a good place to be in. We needed to adapt quickly and we didn't have the money to actually hire a new person. So we needed to involve in another way. And finding new ways of achieving our goals can actually make us innovate even more. And in this example, well, you might have guessed it already if we're talking about content, we started to use AI in some of our content creation. And yes, AI content still needs to check big time but it did help us to work faster and to experiment a bit more and to actually do more in the same amount of time. Also, people were way more motivated because they could actually use this new way of working instead of doing everything the old way. So it actually gave us two things. So some of the greatest innovations have been born out of resource limitations. Finding out, well, in your change process that you don't have enough resources can help stimulate innovation. But there's something, of course, to worry about because I'm not saying you should always make sure there's not enough time to do stuff in order to help people innovate because, of course, there are worries about burnout, people being stressed too much. So I think there's always a fine line that if you're leading a change process, you should always think about, okay, how's my team doing? Is this something they can actually handle? And again, I'm getting back here to the growth mindset because that can actually help people focus on the right things, help them to be happy about this change, help them think creatively without thinking, oh no, I'm just overwhelmed. But if you are having your resources right and made the right innovations along the way, it can help you do a better planning and in the end also lead to a healthier work environment. So let's dive into the most actionable and last element of this talk, the action plan. This refers to a clear, detailed, organized roadmap outlining the steps that are necessary to implement the change. It's a plan that guides your team from where they are now towards the envisioned change. And without the solid action plan, you're sure that you're all for false starts of your change process, leaving your team feeling a bit directionless and disengaged. But I think this image actually shows it pretty well because with all the things we already talked about today, it's actually pretty hard to make this fixed action plan and especially if we're talking about complex change, you have a lot of things that you have to take in mind. So, well, let's dive into an example first. When I first started at Joost, I picked up this internal project that taught people how to use Slack more effectively. I created an extensive Slack guide with tips and things how we're doing tips and how we are doing things at Joost, Slack hacks and the rules that apply it for using Slack specifically at Joost. And though we already used Slack, some of these things actually impacted how we were using it. So after the really, really, really extensive guide was done, we launched a project, of course, with a Slack message, but we also hosted an internal webinar that explained more about the guides. And unfortunately, my colleagues are sitting here so they know not much has changed until now. Do you remember the webinar? Yeah, so we remember the webinar. We know there's a guide, but we're not really doing things differently. My biggest failure, well, I didn't make a proper action plan. And as I said, creating this action plan is not a small task at all. It actually requires a deep understanding of your team's capabilities, your organizational structure and the complexities of the change you're implementing. And as I said, I just started at Joost, so I didn't really know all these things. Of course, I asked for input and I tried my best, but I was at the company for two months or something like that. So I did not have the knowledge to actually create this fixed action plan. And apart from that, creating this action plan involves setting clear goals, defining roles and responsibilities, outlining timelines, establishing benchmarks for success. So not only like the success at the end, the vision that we want to achieve, but also like what is success along the way. And if I had actually done this properly for my Slack project, I would have communicated how the changes should actually, what the changes should actually look like when they were implemented and what the expectations were from, for example, team leads or how we were talking to each other. And even when you created this fantastic action plan, so imagine I did create this fantastic action plan, you can make mistakes because it's of course not uncommon for teams to well expect or actually encounter unexpected things, miss deadlines, people leave the company, you have resource problems, like a lot of things can happen along the way. So that's why my solution to this one is focus on making this agile action plan because the action plan shouldn't be set in stone. It should be a dynamic document that actually evolves with your team's experiences, learning and with their feedback and input as well. And each misstep is a chance to revisit the plan, to investigate what we can do better and to actually check our lessons learned so we can actually adapt and grow better and adjust your course of your action accordingly. So in summary, a change without an action plan isn't a change as we saw with my slack guides. And the path towards this effective action plan is trial and error and learning from your failures. And actually preparing this talk made me think about that slack guide and thinking that I am going to pick it up again because I think I do have the knowledge right now to actually take us to the next level. And I just want you all to be encouraged like a failed attempt is in the dead end. So even though I started this slack project over a couple of years ago, I mean, the plan, the guide is still there. It just needs that last step but this just needs like some energy putting into it and some clear next steps and the definition of success. So I think this actually helps me like creating a better action plan in the future and therefore better managing this complex change. So it's almost time to wrap up this talk about complex change management. And I hope that I showed you that making mistakes is actually a really good thing to do because it's not only a consequence of changing, it actually helps you understand all different aspects of change and in the end, even making the change more successful. So we dove into the lipid nostril model of complex change where we talked about vision, skills, incentives, resources and action plans, each a crucial ingredient for a successful change. And of course, in an ideal world, you would go over all these steps and make sure to write down yet you met each one of them in the change that you have in mind. But I also know we're all human, we don't have all the time in the world and sometimes we just wanna get going, right? So you can still succeed without having each of the steps correct. I hope that you already took that from the stock. And I think the thing that's really nice to start doing today, in the beginning, I asked you to think about this complex change at your work or maybe in your personal life. And if you're thinking about that change, what are you encountering? So if we're looking here at the outcomes, are you maybe encountering a lot of resistance? Well, that might can be the cause of a lack of incentives. And like looking at the model the other way around might actually help you to improve the change process you're currently in. So you can actually start failing forward by looking at the changes you're encountering right now because yes, change is hard and it doesn't have to be perfect from the start because let's just embrace failure and it's just a little bit harder to get there but if you do have that growth mindset, so I still think making mistakes, well, it's just fun, right? Let's laugh about it. I mean, as long as it's not something where someone dies, then don't laugh please. I think it's really nice to make mistakes because it just shows we're all human and we can do better in the end. So by embracing this idea of failing forward, we're becoming more resilient and building this organizational culture that actually sees the value in making mistakes. We create a space where individuals feel safe to take risks, to experiment and to voice their opinions. We foster innovation, engagement and ownership. And as leaders, AR professional, team members and everyone else, our roles in the change process are actually to facilitate learning, to lead by example, to model that growth mindset and we must remember that the path towards successful change management is rarely a straight line. It's a journey filled with twists and turns, challenges and opportunities and just mistakes but let's have some fun along the way. That was my talk. Thank you so much. The slides are available right here. Thank you very much, that was great. Thank you. This is for you. Oh, nice. Thank you. We have a little bit of time for questions. So if anybody wants, I'm gonna, I have the mic so I can go to you and please, if you have a question, if you could please wait until you have the mic so that the question is also recorded for posterity, for wordpress.tv, please. Excellent talk. Thank you. Sorry. I do have a question. Oh, I see one there already. I can go second. I can go second. Thank you very much, very great talk. Very interesting for me. I'm a member of an open source project and I'm wondering how does this change management idea works for open source projects with limited incentive possibilities, with limited resources? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I think, like, are you one of the leaders as well? Yes. Yeah. So I think like, as someone that actually leads this group, it's really important to focus on those incentives that of course aren't monetary. So let's just like talk together with your group about what actually makes you feel rewarded and that can already like do a shout out in the make wordpress slack, for example, or say, okay, today we're doing this online team building activity, just like some games online. If you want tips about that, Noringa, who's sitting here, you have great tips for like online team building that like doesn't have to cost a lot of money because of course that's really important. And so I think the first thing here is get the conversation started. How do you feel rewarded? And what can we do within open source to actually make that happen? Does that answer your question? I see you're still a bit in doubt. We can talk about it more at the Yoast booth if you want. Yeah, that's a great idea. Thank you. Anyone else? Anybody facing change? Yes. A little bit different question. I was very intrigued about your slack guide. Are you planning to share or are you also social media, some sneak peeks for others to try to implement it? Thanks. Yeah, we can definitely talk about that as well. It's actually, I think 30 pages or something. And yeah, so there's actually one online available, so not from Yoast, which we used as an inspiration. So there are some online that is actually really nice to like see those hacks and yeah. I want those too now. Anyone else? My question was about incentives. You mentioned an example where the first incentive, the example with the truck drivers, where the first incentive didn't really work, then you pivot and then you worked and I think it was brilliant. Thank you for the story. My question is, have you ever had maybe other examples where even the pivoting still doesn't work? And I'm gonna give you some context because I used to work for a software company where actually that going from paper to web was the big thing and we also promoted the less administrative tasks. However, we encounter sometimes that for some peoples, it was a production environment. So for some people actually writing things on paper was a lot faster than clicking, especially for people that don't necessarily see that a computer for most of the time. So that didn't work. So even the pivoting and sometimes you just discover this along the way and then you think that this is gonna bring you less paperwork because it literally was less paperwork but it was for them a lot of clicking and searching. So have you ever had like to search deeper for it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, sometimes it just doesn't work at the first, second or third time. And I think there are like a couple of elements here that are pretty interesting to look at. So one of the things is always take a look at like peer pressure and stuff like that because like if a group is very resistant then it's really hard to motivate them. So you can't even tell them the right thing but if they just like feel this internal grudge like I don't wanna change, they're like talking to each other all the time, right? And they won't be changing. So I think that's really interesting. Like try to look at like group dynamics and see who is like the social leader because you always have like those key influences within a group, talk to them like separately and see if you can find like their things. Like what are they motivated? What are they holding them back? See how you can motivate them because in the end they will influence the group. But like the second thing is sometimes your ambition change just isn't good enough, right? I mean, that's also something be brave about that as well. And I can imagine like in a society where we're all moving more towards a digital world. In your case, you would want people in the end to move to the software just because of it's more future proof, for example. But yeah, then it just takes some time and people just have to start doing it for a really long time before they actually get used to it. And yeah, that's just not, that's much fun. I agree with you. Thank you. Yes, that's true. I like the social leaders. That's a very good. Yeah, something we often forget, right? Yeah. And they move the masses, they move to it. Thank you. Thank you.