When General Motors first partnered with Ferrazzi Greenlight, the automotive company
had reached an epic turning point in its storied history. It was 2010, and leadership was
still reeling from the recent bankruptcy filing and the fallouts from that event. At this
point, the U.S. government’s ownership share in the company was high, public
perception was low, internal company moral was suffering, and GM’s overall market
share languished.
Under these pressures, GM USA leaders were also asked to compensate for the poor
performances in Europe and South America. They were tasked with turning the company
around by shepherding an ambitious number of products through the pipeline, and
helping to move from a structural cost-based company to a revenue generation based
one.
GM’s leadership knew that to achieve these lofty goals and transform the business, they
needed to transform the customer experience. While there were many touch points in the
value chain that mattered, it was the customer experience at the dealership that needed
the most attention.
Since the dealerships were not under manufacturing control—they were franchises—the
relationship between the company and dealership was curated by a sales field team, led
by district managers. Unfortunately, the district manager role had grown more
programmatic and transactional over the years and not as much a partnership with the
dealer. District managers acted more like auditors. They would arrive at the dealership
and run through a check list of programs and specials with the dealer or a manager, then
they would ask them to sign up.
The district manager role desperately needed to evolve into coaches, consultants and
trusted advisors of the customer experience in partnership with the dealers. The district
managers would be a strategic partner, helping dealers to grow their businesses, and
meet their goals, all while improving the customer experience and increasing GM’s
market share.
To achieve this, GM’s leadership team asked FG to help usher in a culture change. But
cultures don’t change—it’s people who change their behaviors. FG, thus, translated their
culture change mandate into cracking the code of human behavior that would drive
measurable business outcomes.
As is true in many cases of business transformation, FG knew that the behaviors needing
to change the most are too often the ones that keep interdependent teams, in the
customer value chain, from working collaboratively. These behaviors, like candor, service,
humility, and peer-to-peer commitment, are the most difficult to get people to adopt and
traditionally the least attended to, which is understandable. Business leaders focus first
upon what’s under their control and not in the handoffs or how teams operate across
divisions and silos. But for new value to be unleashed during transformation, it’s usually
within these interdependencies.
TRUSTED ADVISOR BEHAVIORS
When people can transform their behaviors and act from candor, service, humility and peer-to-peer commitment (among other collaborative behaviors), what emerges are high-
impact teams capable of generating remarkable innovations and business results. Ferrazzi Greenlight calls collaborative behaviors, Trusted Advisor (TA) behaviors. And it
was these Trusted Advisor behaviors that formed the basis for the cultural transformation
of the GM North American Sales Division field team.
To assure success after prior failed cultural transformation efforts, Mark Reuss agreed
that TA wasn’t just another program. It needed to be an integrated system that awoke
people to a new way of being in the workplace, a new way of showing up with each other,
of behaving as teammates who wouldn’t let each other fail, and as partners, all the way
out to the customer (in this case into the dealer network).
At the beginning of the partnership, FG roughed out a six-month experiential and
immersive challenge to the district managers that we called “One Dealer.” It was an
invitation to district managers willing to co-create with GM and FG a new set of coaching
and consultative behaviors aimed at shifting market share at one of their dealer partners.
The challenge was not mandatory but began with a subset of volunteers from whom
emerged a set of role models who themselves were coached and facilitated by FG master
facilitators through six, half-day sessions. Participants were then organized into smaller
peer-to-peer coaching groups who committed to not let each other fail.
Astounding stories of success poured in from field team members who were practicing
the TA behaviors with their one dealers experiencing increased sales, a shift in market
share and better measurable customer experiences.
One district manager said that Trusted Advisor gave him the spark to interact with one of
his dealers differently. He helped his dealer identify was to improve profitability of the
store. In twelve-fifteen months of working in partnership, the dealer was up 44.7 percent
YOY in parts sales, customer pay business was up 11.5 percent and the customer pay
dollars per RO was up 18.4 percent.
Another district manager worked collaboratively to help one of his dealers go from leasing
almost zero GM vehicles to a 45 percent lease rate on new vehicle sales. Sales volume
soon followed, as the dealer saw monthly sales climb to 41 percent YOY.
Success stories, like the ones above, came in so rapidly and with such profound results
that it fueled the fast adoption of the FG change system at GM USA. Leaders approved
the creation of new, full-time positions with individuals who were certified as Master
Trainers of the FG method and solely responsible for sustaining Trusted Advisor and
exporting the initiative to other regions of North America.
What started as a six-month engagement turned into a five-year partnership that by the
end every member of the U.S. Sales Field Team, as well teams at corporate
headquarters, had participated in the Trusted Advisor transformation. The FG behavior change system also included coaching the GM executive team to adopt a set of highest-
return behaviors and practices in monthly staff meetings. Leaders committed not only to collaborate but co-elevate (which is taking on a commitment to proactively coach each
other to higher levels of success and performance) in service of the new mission while
ensuring an agile focus on business performance.
REWRITING TRADITION
While the focus of this piece is on GM, many organizations have benefited from the FG
approach. Dun & Bradstreet’s CEO applied this strategy to reverse five years of flat to
declining performance which resulted in a 20 percent increase in the company’s share
price, while Verizon’s enterprise president said he had never experienced such
monumental shifts in behavior in such a short time period. Ebay, BASF, Safeway,
Lincoln Financial and Nextera are among a long list of other companies who credit
unparalleled success with our relational and behavioral approach to transformational
change.
Our approach to cracking the code of behavior change is based on powerful insights that
challenge traditional thinking in behavior and culture change and take a relational and
behavioral approach. And it’s about time that we shake up the norm. Studies show less
than 30 percent of change actually sticks.
Leaders must do better—and now they can. Below are the unconventional insights that
we have built our successful programs upon.
It is only through people moving beyond reactive collaboration toward a commitment to
co-elevate in service of the company mission and each other that business results will be
achieved. With this partnership, leaders can begin to execute on their audacious
business strategies and realize the real, long-lasting results that the markets require.
18 POWERFUL INSIGHTS TO RADICALLY TRANSFORM CULTURES FOR MEASURABLE OUTCOMES
1. Change at scale is absolutely possible, if led like past grassroots MOVEMENTS…by the people.
After GM emerged from bankruptcy, the company conducted a survey among the rank
and file. The results showed most employees seriously doubted that a fundamental
behavior transformation was possible en masse. In fact, fewer than 25 percent felt it was
likely. But big change is possible when you richly engage your people, as we were
committed to do at GM.
Change just doesn’t happen because the top leaders decry its necessity, it happens
because the people believe the leaders are with them on the journey, they believe the benefits to them personally early on, and they feel they can be part of something bigger
than themselves.
Despite most people’s first reaction of doubt, many companies have experienced
measurable impact from broad reaching transformational changes. For instance, take the
activation of the Safety and Quality movements of the last 50 years which created major
shifts in behavior. People deeply felt those changes. And it was the personal leadership
of many black belt process improvement team owners at the manufacturing plants all
over the world who ultimately made the biggest difference to the Quality transformation.
Ferrazzi Greenlight founder and chairman, Keith Ferrazzi, has spent his career
researching and changing the behaviors that block people in organizations from reaching
their goals. With his deep background in Six Sigma and TQM systems, Keith believed
that what worked for process change could be unleashed to change peoples’
behaviors. Thus, TA was created by blending Six Sigma and TQM strategies and
philosophies, and applying it to coaching, relational and collaborative behaviors.
What was once successfully used to ignite sweeping process changes, FG applied it to
behavior change. As a result, it wasn’t long after the launch of the Trusted Advisor
movement that GM rank-in-file employees had changed their perspective on change.
Whereas less than 25 percent of people had once believed behavior change was possible,
soon number leaped to 80 percent who now believed mass transformation could
happen.
2. Transformation requires Behavior Engineering.
Cultures don’t change until people change their behaviors and adopt new
practices. Results happen only in the doing. But, behavior change is hard. That’s why our
method begins with focusing on discovering the FEWEST people changing the
NARROWEST behaviors and practices that will deliver the highest return to the business
strategy.
There is too much emphasis during transformation on cultural concepts framed in big
talk and little practical clarity aligned to expected business results. Traditional change
management relies on communications and training, yielding lackluster results of less
than 30 percent success rates. Passing on knowledge and understanding is not enough
to deliver real behavior change.
To transform an organization, we have to transform people’s old behaviors into new
behaviors by adopting what we call, high return practices, over an extended period of
time. But you cannot change ALL behaviors. You need to aim at the practices that will
change the behaviors aligned to the most critical strategic priorities.
The research underpinnings that led to this particular insight were an outgrowth of
work Ferrazzi had engaged in at Harvard Business School with his mentor and professor, Len Schlesinger, around the service profit chain which proved that the internal customer
experience would be predictive of the ultimate external customer experience.
Ferrazzi Greenlight has since made a science of measuring the ROI of particular
interventions along the customer value chain. TA was built on these research-based
relational and collaborative practices that generate the highest sustainable return and
lead to tremendous results for an organization.
3. The most successful change initiatives begin with an emphatic challenge; a call to
action inspiring and influencing people to go higher together.
Change movements are made real and expanded by the people, but they still need to be
incited and inspired. Someone needs to connect the promises for the new behavior
changes with a need for immediate action.
To ignite an early movement, people need to know what they are getting behind. They
need a shared mission that gives them a purpose toward changing their behaviors.
FG’s partnership with GM began with an inspirational speech delivered by Keith Ferrazzi
to the North American Sales Team and enlisted and coached Mark Reuss to drive the
message home. Keith’s “One Dealer” speech kick-started the audience’s journey. During
that set of talks, they listened as Keith, Mark and other leaders talked about key
behaviors that would need changing, about the internal blockers that hindered them, and
how they all could begin to transform their actions to see better results.
Years later, GM team members still fondly recall Mark Reuss’ moving comments and cite
it as the moment they saw TA as something more than just another initiative from
headquarters.
4. People must CHOOSE to enlist in the movement and then they are the best ones to grow the movement.
From that first “One Dealer” movement challenge talk delivered by Mark Reuss and
Keith Ferrazzi, over 200 team members, out of nearly a thousand, accepted the
challenge, but fewer than a hundred seriously took up the mantle. We then organized
those who self-selected into small teams, while simultaneously creating formal pilots to
test drive TA.
Although small in number, these teams created a strong community, and became early
adopters and believers in the promises of TA. These strong communities became role
models and recruits for the rest of the sales division who watched as their peers
transformed their behaviors to enjoy better results with their dealers. These early
adopters showed others what was possible by winning and inviting them to join the TA
movement.
Once more than 30 percent of the Sales Division field team were engaged, there was no
turning back. The movement had picked up momentum.
5. Get the system right somewhere before getting it right
everywhere.
When changing behavior, every individual must find their own path to success. That
takes much trial and failure, and time. We launched One Dealer because we knew that district managers would need time to figure out how to adapt the general principles
and new behaviors they were learning to fit their unique style. They had to create their
own formula to successfully transform a dealer.
But, we knew once they cracked that code, they could quickly export their unique
formula to all the dealers that they worked with. Participants were asked to select one
dealer to try their new behaviors on. Not a dealer who was struggling, and not a dealer
who was soaring, but someone in the middle—a rising star—who would be open to
advice about growing their business, and where that advice, when applied, could yield
a measurable return.
6. People change their behaviors faster in communities
committed to each other.
Humans are tribal. They function best interdependently and adapt to change quicker,
together. When it comes to modifying deeply ingrained behaviors, Weight Watchers,
religious groups and 12-step programs have leveraged the power of community and
have the best measurable track record in helping people make sustainable changes.
One reason TA was so effective was that it created communities around behavior
change, and facilitated deep bonds around a shared movement, a mission, and the
teams themselves. Everyone worked to change the same behaviors, they experienced
the same challenges, and they were committed to the same mission of improving their
coaching relationships with dealers to improve the customer’s experience.
7. Coaching is king and available in abundance around us.
Only about 10 percent of behavior change comes from merely understanding what
needs to change. This is the shortfall of traditional training which may convey
information but leaves little room for experiential on-the-job learning. Coaching, which
is based on iterative dialog between the learner and the coach (often a manager and direct report), is far superior in transforming knowledge into action, and action into
new habits and behaviors.
But traditional manager-driven coaching faces a crisis. In a recent two-year study that
FG conducted on the challenges facing business transformation, we found that overstretched
and often underdeveloped managers, are not performing their coaching
duties as they once did.
With increasing demand for behavior transformation from constantly increasing pace
of change and a dwindling supply of traditional coaching, GM (and most organizations)
needed a different approach… cue FG’s model of unleashing peer-to-peer coaching.
Within TA, we organized 4-5 district managers into committed peer-to-peer coaching
teams. These small teams worked collaboratively to problem solve, to share best
practices, and to help one another develop into better consultants and coaches to the
dealerships.
At first, participants also had one-on-one coaching calls with FG professionals and
Senior GM Field Team leaders to further reinforce the new behaviors. But ultimately,
the district managers got the lion’s share of their transformation coaching from their
peers. This system of peer-to-peer coaching remains in the company today and forms
the foundation of development and introduction of other new programs and initiatives.
8. Creating psychological safety unlocks empathy and trust,
which creates an openness to change.
Opening people to change is a science and an art. It requires constant attention, not
an act that happens at the beginning of change and then the box is checked and we
move on. Encouraging and inspiring people to change also means purposefully
maintaining interpersonal environments that continue to make change inviting,
comfortable and safe.
FG created many practices and experiences that helped field teams forge deeper
connections and bonds with each other so they could translate that to their
partnership with dealers. During their peer-to-peer sessions, district managers were
invited and encouraged to share in a more authentic and less transactional manner. To
open up discussions of meaning and purpose around the work and even explore what
was going on in their lives personally as well as professionally. This practice, which
happens at the beginning of a meeting, is called personal-professional check in and is
used at numerous GM meetings today.
The more authentic and open district managers were with each other, the deeper their
bonds went, and the more committed to change and coaching each other to success
they became. FG developed a diagnostic called the Porosity Index which tested for the
openness that people had for change and the existence of psychological safety.
9. Kill conflict avoidance.
Conflict Avoidance is the greatest inhibitor to transformation. Unfortunately, most
people avoid conflict, but you can’t create accountability or generate real results
without candid conversations about what’s really happening in an organization, on a
team, and even with particular individuals.
But candid conversations can ONLY take place when there’s a solid foundation of
psychological safety (discussed above), respect, support, and trust. From the
challenge talk to the leadership staff meetings, to the peer to peer coaching, to what is
reported up to the executive team, to the more supportive and accountable dealership
relationships, a commitment to candor laid the foundation along with a deep
commitment to each other which gave permission for that candor.
10. Never accept a victim mindset.
Change is hard, and change is different for each person and every team. Challenges
will arise, but it’s not enough for a team to identify the problems. Each member must
be committed to raising the problems and collaboratively finding the
solutions…together.
During TA sessions, teams engaged in collaborative problem-solving exercises that
identified blockers to change, then the group developed solutions to try in the field.
11. Speak the language that is understood till they learn the
new language.
Every organization has a language. Some corporations respect a data language while
others are moved by passion and values but all businesses speak the language of
results and outcomes. GM was an engineering-based organization, so we spoke in
terms of process and metrics.
Language is very important on so many levels, for instance even though it was popular
to speak poorly of the recent GM culture prior to bankruptcy, we never disparaged or
told people how they behaved previously was wrong or bad, in fact, we celebrated
what got them to this place, but we were clear it was not what would take them to
where they wanted to go.
12. Change doesn’t solidly land until it becomes very
personal.
To overcome the early entropy and build momentum, people have to feel an emotional
connection to the change they’re asked to make. Unfortunately, few companies can
manifest a deep personal commitment between their people and the company, and
the company’s mission.
Early on, we focused district manager’s transformation on how to create a much richer
and less stressful day-to-day working environment that allowed them to form real
partnerships with the dealers they served.
That was attractive to district managers who had not signed up for this role just to
push programs, check boxes and audit resistant dealers. The promise of a new way of
working, a new way of showing up to do their jobs, was a strong early motivator for
many district managers.
It didn’t take long before district managers discovered that the same partnerships and
relational capabilities they were building with dealers could be used in their personal
lives and in their relationships at home too. Story after story that DMs recounted to
each other during their group sessions was of how TA not only helped them transform
their relationships with dealers but also how their new behaviors were helping them to
become better spouses and parents.
The deeply personal change that people were undergoing helped spread the TA
movement. We often forget that at all levels of an organization, we are all looking for
greater fulfillment and if we can tether that promise to the change at hand, it will be
accelerated and sustained.
13. The answers are truer and longer lasting when they are
iterative, co-created and agile.
Too often change initiatives fail from the hubris of believing that the central
coordinators of the change can take a “bake and ship” approach. No group can tell
those who need to change what needs to be changed and how with 100 percent
certainty. And even if they could, it wouldn’t stick without the engagement with and
from the field.
Lasting change is co-created, so at the beginning we worked diligently to identify
about 30 percent of the behaviors and practices that we felt needed to change. Then
we humbly invited 10 percent of the population to join the early peer groups to test,
measure and iterate and refine the methodology, all the while showing we respected
that they could contribute insights we wouldn’t have from headquarters. This is
another lesson from the TQM movement.
Once we saw early results with the pilot teams, then we rolled it out regionally to about
30 percent of the community and again invited their peer group refinement, and then
nationally and internationally, all the while embracing the continued refinements and
customizations of the field peer groups.
We invited them to try different approaches, to see and measure what produced
better results for them, and encouraged people to adapt each practice to naturally fit
their style.
14. People need to see quick results and be celebrated in
order to grow the movement.
Early wins, when celebrated, build momentum among the role models, demonstrating
that the new behaviors actually work and are achievable to anyone willing to practice
the new behaviors. This makes the potential real and attracts others to the community
and movement too.
In TA, by the third session, when participants received positive feedback from their
targeted dealers, they saw how their relationships were changing and how the dealers
were enjoying better outcomes.
A number of channels were used to showcase district managers’ successes with TA.
There were weekly video stories shared with the sales team, people were asked to share their stories at regional and national events, and others stories were written and distributed via internal communication outlets.
Publicly celebrating the early wins and precisely how they were gained by real people
is what we call “communications coaching” which reinforces the specific types of
behaviors leaders want and need to transform the business. When you highlight
people succeeding, you also make those who aren’t changing feel like they’re missing
out on an exclusive club. Now celebration becomes a recruitment tool, bringing
resisters into the fold.
15 People must be heard.
In most change initiatives, no one listens enough once the preliminary diagnostic is
finished. Too often the “change” and the related ecosystem to support that change is
designed, and that’s it. Except it’s not. Change needs to be a constant two-way
dialogue.
During TA, participants constantly had open channels where they could report the
ecosystem blockers, resistances, and challenges that were preventing them from
changing. They had a direct line all the way up to leadership through the monthly
leadership meetings, and leadership was committed to making quick decisions and
responding to their people on the ground. The key was that we created a way for their
suggested changes to enable their success to quickly rise to resolution one way or
the other.
16. It takes real resources, time, and support from leadership
to create sustainable change.
Not only did GM’s leadership team commit the emotional and personal support to TA,
they also committed the resources, money, and time to the ensure it succeeded. With
the success of FG’s coaching methodology, the organization created new internal permanent positions to phase out FG coaches called Senior Field Advisors who were hired to lead the TA training sessions and to provide dedicated support to field team members who needed help.
FG also facilitated Mark Reuss’s monthly staff meeting to not only transform the
leadership behaviors but to act as a screening and quick decision making body for
requests that came from the field peer groups needing resolution. Leaders took input
from members of the movement and were quick to make decisions and change policy
and allocate time and resources to ensure the participants were supported as long as
the results merited.
Nothing speaks more loudly of support than directly responsive support.
Change takes time. An offsite meeting, a one-time training class, or even a well
thought through communications strategy to your people isn’t enough. Successful
change initiatives focus on how quickly you can drive to your intended outcomes while
ensuring behaviors change for the long-term.
Trusted Advisor was intentionally designed to take participants 6-9 months to
complete, and the program was slowly rolled out to key constituencies over a five-year
period.
While the resources allocated to TA were significant, the return was too. Many,
including the CFO, credit the TA system for the success of the GM NA Transformation.
17. Leaders must commit to undergo a parallel change
journey with their people.
There is no sitting at command post, ushering directives for people to change. To
create a change movement within an organization, leaders have to show they care
enough to participate themselves, to share their own humble, fallible journeys too.
When leaders show humility and actively demonstrate their pursuit of growth, it influences their people to become more open (or what we call, porous) to the change challenge at hand.
Mark Reuss accepted the “One Dealer” challenge and we tracked his humble progress
and struggles as he went through TA. He willingly shared his journey with district
managers, going so far as to offer what he believed he needed to focus on to become
the leader he wanted to be to make this transformation possible. By displaying his
vulnerability and humility to the broader district manager community, Reuss reinforced
the point that everyone, from the top all the way down, was on this journey together.
18. Change only counts if there are measurable outcomes.
Measuring the true impact of behavioral change is tough. You cannot wait until the
very end to see victory or you’ll lose the movement’s traction. With TA, we needed to
measure throughout the program, so we created a custom designed 1-5 Level scale.
When participants started the program, they were at a TA Level 1, which recognized
their desire to change. As they went through the six sessions, they would gradually
climb the scale. When they reached Level 2, others had to qualitatively acknowledge
the behavior changes that were happening to them. When they reached Level 3,
programs and new actions had been adopted by the participants. Level 4, was when
business results could be measured, and Level 5 was when they could demonstrate a
shift in the market’s recognition with a rise in stock prices related to the new
behaviors.
Each level was measurable and validated, so leaders saw the correlated impact TA had
on the business outcomes.
