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Say “Yes, And!” to Connecting Through Technology with Roger Courville

In this episode, I talk to Roger Courville, a virtual events pioneer with over 25 years of experience. Roger shares his journey from the early days of 'internet conferencing' to becoming a recognized expert on adapting in-person interactions to virtual settings. He explains the "Analyze, Map, Discover" framework, a systematic approach for turning resistance to change into opportunities for innovation—whether you’re presenting online, managing change, or just tackling something new.

We also discuss why people resist change, how to engage audiences better online, and why building relationships—whether virtually or in-person—is critical to success. Oh, and if you love spicy food and Rush, you’re in for a real treat!

Key Takeaways:

  • The "Analyze, Map, Discover" framework for navigating any change.

  • How virtual presentations can solve challenges like participation and engagement.

  • The biggest mindset shifts needed when moving from in-person to virtual events.

  • The importance of understanding what’s lost and gained in any new medium.

  • Why resistance to change comes from noticing losses before gains.

  • A small change that could make the world better: "Take someone you don’t know to coffee and ask them, ‘Tell me your story.’"

Relevant Links:

Unedited Transcript

Avish Parashar

Hello, Roger, and welcome to the podcast.

Roger Courville

Hey, Veesh. Great to see you again.

Avish Parashar

Yeah. Awesome. For those wondering about again, obviously, I've seen Roger many times, but I was just recently, a guest on Roger's podcast. So we're sort of returning the favorites. I had a great conversation there. And when that ended, I said, hey. You should do something like this for mine.

So thank you for joining. For the people who don't know about you, Roger, I wanna kick things off. We're gonna talk about some interesting stuff here, but why don't you give everyone sort of the the one minute mini bio of Roger Corville and kinda what you're up to these days, what you're all about.

Roger Courville

Well, I was I was born into a middle class family, and, you know, if you go to rogercorville.com, that actually kind of then has tentacles that go out to various things. So 50,000 feet, I just passed 25 years in the virtual events business. What you might think of is the technology that enables webinars and virtual events and that kind of thing. That's since before Zoom was Zoom. I've been doing that kind of stuff. I work as a fractional executive for a company that does production for other companies, Nike, United Nations, etcetera, just as the production crew and I'm the head of strategy for them. But I only do that part time because I'm also working on my doctorate, just about ready to finish that up.

Live near Seattle and, I love habaneros. I'm a bad guitar player.

Avish Parashar

Well, alright then. You gave us, many things to, talk about here. Let's start with the first most important one. You love habaneros. You're talking the hot pepper?

Roger Courville

Bring it.

Avish Parashar

Alright. Do you grow them yourself? Do you just go buy them?

Roger Courville

Have. But, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, we don't have quite the same kind of growing season as other places. So it's I find it. Spend a lot of time to, you know I think I'm probably into habaneros about $800 a pound if I grow them myself. So Yeah.

Avish Parashar

That's fair. I had a, I love I love spicy stuff too and habaneros, and I had a friend who grew them here in Philadelphia across the river in Jersey. And he had, like, this big crop, so he gave me a a, like, a gallon sized ziplock bag, and I just kept it in my freezer. And I used to use all the time, and I loved them. I'd chop them up, put them in my chili and my cheese sauce, and and then when I ran out, I just never bought them again myself. So this, like, inspires me. I gotta go and and kinda habanero it up myself.

Do you have a specific do you have a an habanero specialty, a special recipe, or a special way you like to use them?

Roger Courville

No. I eat eggs a lot for breakfast, but, yeah, to your point, chilies or various things. I mean, I'm I don't like to blow myself out with the casserole and how hot it's supposed to be. I just love the flavor. So

Avish Parashar

Alright. I love it. I love it.

I use jalapenos in my eggs. I mean, I'll try habanero and really kinda start my day off right. Alright. Well, obviously, we're not here to talk about habaneros, but I was not expecting that. I'm like, alright. Let's let's let's learn about that. So you mentioned a few things, and I kinda wanna talk about all of it.

And I wanna start. You you said something interesting that you've been in the virtual presenting space for 25 years. Now when I start doing that math, 25 years would put us back in 1999 Yep. Which sort of seems like that predates the existence of virtual presenting. So could you because back then, the technology was so much more limited. And so could you just start out by just get how did you like, how and why and what was the what was the world landscape the virtual presenting landscape like when you got started in it?

Roger Courville

Well, you know, I've started multiple companies over my lifetime, kind of a multi part entrepreneur and had some successes and some not successes. And I was coming off of a not success. I had applied for some jobs because I had, at the time, a new wife and a new baby. And, the one job that had stock options offered me a role and I ended up there. At the time, they didn't even call it webinars. The word webinar wasn't in existence. They called it internet conferencing at the time.

And there were a bunch of different technologies that made that happen. What I found really interesting, and this is right about the dotcom boom, right? So, I mean, they were throwing money at anything that was related to the internet and it's kind of a wild time. But what I found really interesting relative to just about anything else in software because I've been in software for a long time, was that there was a very real business value proposition. We were connecting people with people. Now, at that time, it wasn't like everything video like it is now. Video that back then was like streaming video, like QuickTime or Real Time, you know, Real Player and Windows Media Player.

Avish Parashar

I completely dropped those those terms from

Roger Courville

my end. Or blocked it out from trauma. Yeah. And we were happy if

Avish Parashar

people had 56 k modems, let alone, you know, the kind of speeds that

Roger Courville

we we appreciate today. But what I modems, let alone, you know, the kind of speeds that we appreciate today. But what I found was interesting was since we were in the production space is that we were really helping people with something that actually made sense. It wasn't just like, hey, peapod.com that got like $900,000,000 of funding and then went away because they said, hey, we can deliver your groceries, which was before its time. And so I actually bought a book about how to do seminars. And of course, it had nothing to do with virtual events or web seminars.

Those books didn't exist. I wrote one of the first couple in the industry all those years ago. But then I bought another one, then I bought another one. I just started adapting those ideas of saying, how does an invitation work? What do we do in a registration process? How do we kick off and, you know, fly through and then close-up a seminar? And, of course, webinar is just a portmanteau for web seminar.

And, 25 years later, the you know, it's history.

Avish Parashar

That's well, what I love about this and this it's funny. You know, as I mentioned, you and I spoke, and I'm like, you have such an interesting content and story, and let's get you on my podcast too. But I didn't have, like, a a specific, here's the business problem Roger's gonna come on to talk about. You know, for some people, it's obvious. Like, oh, this person talks about how to have difficult conversations. Like, but as I was listening to your story and this one now specifically, what I I think the common thread I've seen in the various things I've read about you, we've talked about, we're gonna talk about today, is this, like I wanna say innovation in terms of, like, you've entered these various spaces where there are a lot of challenges. You know, once the pandemic hit, everyone made it real easy to get into virtual presenting. Right? But you were back when, like you said, modems and, so let I wanna, if possible, take yourself back to 25 years.

And what was the mindset? Like, you said, you know, you're kinda in between to jump into something else, and this is just like, you there are obviously huge hurdles to presenting virtually. And you you know, you went about how to you you learned you bought the book on on just general presenting. But do you remember what, like, with the internal dialogue you would agree about? Like like, did you not look at it like everyone else and say, alright. Video can't stream online. This is dumb.

This is impossible. Like, what was kind of your thought process looking at this giant challenge of figuring that out?

Roger Courville

Well, you know, I think my my first job in the computer world was in 1992, and first job in software is about 1993. So fast forward So I've been thinking about the nature of an impact of software for a while. And of course, by the time you get to 99, 2000, there's software as a service and this web conferencing stuff. And interestingly, that company ended up getting acquired by a Silicon Valley company that was then acquired by Microsoft, which is how I ended up at Microsoft. And at the time, Microsoft's travel budget was $1,000,000,000 a year. They acquired the company that I was working for, for 200,000,000 meaning if they could save 1 out of 5 business trips, they'd have the thing paid for in a year. Right? So, there was a very real and you didn't need a PhD in mathematics to figure out some kind of a business model for how this might affect, you know, your sales team or your marketing team or those kinds of things.

For me, so in my background there was, 1st sales, then marketing, product marketing, driving, pricing, packaging, positioning, go to market plans, and that kind of thing. But at a personal level, I also was just very interested in the behavior of how people connect. So the one of the genesis to this kind of a long winded answer to your point, the genesis of kind of and kind of a tipping point is by 2,002 ish, you know, I was working at Microsoft and I remember doing I went to Seattle. I was living in Portland at the time, but I went to Seattle for to do a training session for a group of salespeople, it was 4, 500 of them. And one of the sales managers came up to me afterwards and went, Have you ever thought about being a motivational speaker? Now, of course, at the time, I was doing training, not motivational speaking, but they weren't making that particular distinction. But what I found or realized was that I was delivering value in the process of being an expert by helping other people get their head around how they would adapt in person behavior to online behavior. Right? And so ultimately, fast forward, I left Microsoft with a few guys and a couple $1,000,000 of angel funding.

We started another company that we ultimately sold to a telco. And then I struck out on my own in about 2,006 and became a professional speaker, coach, consultant, author, you know, wrote several books and blah, blah, blah. And that's how I ended up with you and meeting you and National Speakers Association, etcetera. But I say all of that to say this. Any industry matures over time and kind of goes through known cycles of how it is initially adopted and then kind of peaks and then maybe hits kind of the late stages of adoption. And that is true more quickly for technologies. But then here comes COVID and our phone's ringing off the hook, right?

Good news is I've had this background of helping people, in one context, corporately as a consultant, think about how to implement and get productivity out of teams, but at a personal level, teaching virtual presentation skills. How do I adapt with PowerPoint? How do I deal with virtual eye contact and virtual body language and on and on and on.

Here comes COVID. And interestingly, all of the things that we've been preaching for years years years have now come to roost for companies that said, We will never do this. We could never do this. So even to this day, one of my largest client is a client that does 3 day continuing medical education seminars for doctors.

Literally 3 days. And they used to have to fly to Boston or San Francisco or Buenos Aires and, you know, do a 3 day seminar. Now, they do it all online. And actually, most of theirs they do. Even now that they can go back to in person, they still do most of their business online. Why? Because everybody's used to being able to do this and actually going, Hey, it's less expensive.

I can walk my dog at lunchtime. I can sleep in my own bed. And that doesn't mean they don't still do in person stuff. What it means is that it is actually a lot more adaptable than most people give credit for. And the way that I would position that as a final close and put it back push it back to you is it's a bit like the key is understanding the difference of how a medium affects the connection and communication. So you can tell a story by writing it in a book. You can tell a story by producing it in a screenplay for a movie.

It could be the same story for the same audience, but we understand that the discipline of how to do it is different. Now, that's an extreme example. It's maybe less obvious when we talk about virtual presentations that use PowerPoint versus in person presentations that use PowerPoint. And in fact, that's part of why sometimes people are slow to change and they spend too much time just info barfing over PowerPoint. But there's very real differences in how we connect and communicate. It's not hard. It's just different.

And that's what I've been doing for a long time, helping people get there.

Avish Parashar

Alright. That's, that's great, and it gives me you know, I keep making these little notes. I'm definitely gonna lose track of some of the stuff I wanna talk about because every time you say something, oh, I wanna ask more about that. You mentioned something in there, which, which is near and dear to my heart in my kind of whole yes and yes, but thing is that, you're talking specific on PowerPoint, but it's like, you know, when faced with a new, let's say, delivery modality. Like, we're gonna do virtual instead of in person. The first thought that goes through most people's minds is how can I do the same thing I was doing this way? How can I do that same thing here?

Now my position is that that's a fine initial question. Let's everyone like, I'm not gonna tell you don't ask that. Don't feel bad for asking. That's everyone's first thought. If the answer is not immediately obvious, then you should switch the question to how can I adapt in a way that makes this new thing even better than the old one I was doing? And that's the jump I see a lot of people not making. So number 1, I'm curious your thought on that your thought on kinda my thought process around that.

And let's stick with the virtual presenting. Do you have ways like, what are some of the tips or ways you've seen people make the transition so they're not just kinda carbon copying and and Band Aid patching it, but actually improve upon the experience in this new medium that they didn't wanna switch to?

Roger Courville

Yeah. Well, I've well, since I've been helping people make that transition very explicitly, I've thought about it a little bit. So let me actually complement and corroborate your kind of gut level observations. And if you will suffer me 3 minutes, I'll give you the academic background. So in the 70s 80s, you began to see Well, actually, the earliest explorations into the academic discipline of distance education actually started back like 60s and before, even if some of it was like correspondence courses, like correspondence courses and that kind of stuff. But the very earliest video conferencing was actually produced in the early seventies by AT and T. We just didn't become commercial for decades after that.

But in the seventies and eighties, began to be people began talking about what is called the transmission theory of communication. And the premise is like you and I are sitting here and one of us is sending signal and the other is receiving signal and then vice versa when it's a conversation. And it's really about the fact that the medium or modality transforms the sending and receiving of signal, which is, in a way, is kind of like going, well, duh. So, the more obvious being like, oh, I want to take my book and put it into a movie. Now what? So, over time, for me, here's the thing. What I observed and then sent me on the academic exploration was that sometimes it's a resistance to change, but people notice psychosocially, they notice what they lose before they notice what they gain. Right? So if I had a nickel for every time I heard somebody go, Oh, yeah, but that presenting virtually thing is okay, but I'd rather be do it in person.

I'm like, Well, yeah, I'd rather be with my wife in person, but but that doesn't mean I don't use the telephone or send an email. Right? It's not better or worse. It's different and it has its place. So here is how I grew to kind of systematize what you were just talking about, how I would take somebody from offline to online. And if somebody is listening to this, grab your pen because it's 3 simple words and there's depth behind each of these 3 words. Analyze, map, discover.

Analyze, map, discover. So, I when I work with somebody, I know what the frequently asked questions are and their objections. Oh, I can't see my audience or, you know, how do I I understand.

Avish Parashar

Sure.

Roger Courville

I would start with somebody. Take somebody speaking and say, what do you do in person? Let's just analyze what you do in person and meet you right there. So, how do you get introduced? How do you walk on stage? Do you use handouts? Do you if you have handouts, like you're a trainer, do you pass those handouts in advance and put them on everybody's chair?

Or do you pass them out part of the way through the program so people don't look at them in advance? Do you use PowerPoint?

Do you use audiovideo? How do you, you know, how do you interact with the audience? Are those interactions formal or informal? Formal meaning I know that when I get to a particular point in the program, I'm gonna ask for a specific audience volunteer. Or formal as in I know there's a particular way I'm gonna unfold the program and there's gonna be a pause between section A and section B where I take some Q and A or whatever. Informal is how do you handle things that happen on the fly? Right? I'm just barreling along.

I pause for a second and Avish says, Hey. You know what Avish does? Oh, does Avish raise his hand? What do I do? Sit there and ignore for the next 45 minutes? That's what they do in webinars. That's not what you're going to do when you're done with me.

Or is it informal? Avish just says, Hey, I've got a question. You see where we analyze or dissect all of the parts. Part 2. Now we take all of those parts, and we map or adapt them to the platform you're using. And honestly, this still works today. This is whether I do consulting with a Fortune 500 company like FedEx, which I've done, or I'm working with an individual, then we take and map and adapt those.

And part of the reason that this process is powerful is because then it doesn't make any difference if they plopped you down in front of Zoom and you know Zoom very well, but tomorrow they plop you in front of a platform like on 24 or one you've never Microsoft Teams, and you've never used Microsoft Teams. And now you feel like you're naked because, well, that's okay.

We got our parts. Now we know what we wanna do with those parts and we map and adapt them to the tools that I have in front of me. And then here's the thing. Remember that our transmission or medium theory of communication. The medium is of course going to transform things. And that means, of course, some things that I do in person aren't going to map or adapt perfectly.

Maybe not even at all. But to the point that you made, Avish, and this was me complimenting you, you get to the other side of the mapping and adapting process. And then you'll find that there are some things that you could do better or different. Or maybe that you could do that wasn't even possible for you to do in in person. Right? One being the obvious being something like in a distance, but let me give you one example and then I'll shut my trap. In a training scenario or a facilitation scenario, you're sitting in front of a room full of 15 people that you're going to train for something.

And let's say you want to, you know, it's going to be a 2 hour training and right? And Right? And if you can keep everybody up to 1 minute, then you're a better man than I am because that doesn't happen. But what happens when we move online? We could have everybody on mute and do them, you know, have them audio video introduce themselves. Got the same 15 or 20 minutes that goes by for introductions. Or you know where we're going with this. Right? You could have them type it into chat.

First of all, they don't even have to name their name because when they type something into chat, I'm gonna see their name because it's in chat. And then they answer the question, you know, where are you from? What would you like to learn today? Or something like that. And what was a 15 or 20 minute exercise in person now is what?

2 minutes online? And the reason is psychosocially is one can only be sequential because of the nature of the space being in the same space. Right? Otherwise, we're talking over each other if we're in person. But online, in a way, when we type into chat, instead of being sequential, it can be simultaneous because everybody's in a sense talking at the same time, but not in a way that disrupts us. Right? And we're already used to that kind of communication on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter or X, right?

So now you can we can see each other's stuff. As a presenter or facilitator, I could even, you know, look at stuff and go, Oh, Julie says and Avish says and Pradeep says and, Oh, Kylie makes a good point. And now we just took 15 or 20 minutes and turned it into 2 or 3 minutes. Is it right or wrong? No. It's different because of the change of medium. And Analyze, map, adapt, discover.

Avish Parashar

Well, I love that. And, analyze, map, discover because I feel, you know, you're starting with what you know, and maybe even getting a deeper understanding of what you know. Because I think sometimes people seem to talk about improv, and I talk about, like, being willing to step into uncertainty and let go of things from the past. And, you know, that's the message I'm supposed to deliver, but I don't want people to say and I even say, like, this doesn't mean everything has to be uncertain, but it's like be willing to. So start what you know, map it, but then you're gonna find the gaps. And then, and to kinda reinforce your specific example about the chat, you know, I do keynotes with humor and improv comedy. So when the pandemic happened and everything had to switch to virtual, it was really a hard transition for me at first because, a, it's hard to do comedy when you can't see the reactions from people. Mhmm. And, b, like, in improv, I'll get volunteers.

I'll get suggestions from the audience. I'm like, how am I gonna do that? So and I I kinda did started with what we talked about. We did, alright. Just do it the same way. And then I take someone off mute to be my volunteer or I'd get suggestions that way. And the audio delay, like, just didn't work.

So I figured out adaptations, which actually in some ways made the improv stronger. Like, I I it's hard to explain, but I became my own volunteer. Like, normally, I give a volunteer a bell, and every time they ring it, I change. I'm like, look. I'm just gonna clap my hands myself, and, like, it's gonna seem weird, but I'm gonna be my own volunteer. And it works so well. But with the chat, and it's gonna lead to my my next sort of question slash observation, is because I would get a suggestion for my story or game or whatever I'm doing virtually, I wouldn't wanna take people off mute kinda to your point.

It'd be you know, in person, you can have everyone yell at the same time. You can't do that on Zoom. So I was like, just enter it into the chat. And the level of participation was so much higher because in person, there's gonna be a lot of people that don't wanna speak up. They don't wanna call out a suggestion or a thought. But if you're just sitting behind your keyboard, it's like, I was getting a lot more. So I think an approach, and let's get your kind of opinion on this, is when you're when you're after analyzing and mapping, also ask yourself, like, what are the problems I'm currently facing?

Like, what are the things that annoy me or I'd like to do better? So is it you know, I like it whenever we can introduce themselves, but it takes so long. Or I wish more people would participate. And then ask, alright. Is this new medium or new change going to allow me to to improve that scenario? So it's not just like a vague, oh, how could it be better? But start with, hey.

You know, what really bothers me? And is there something in this new medium that's gonna let me fix that or or better deal with that? So I don't know if that's a an approach you've taken or kind of what your thoughts are on sort of the the problem solving approach of the new medium instead of just a general, like, because I talk about people ask, how could this be better? But I like this idea of like, alright. What can you solve with this new medium?

Roger Courville

Yeah. I mean well, I mean, since career wise, 2 thirds of my work was with adult learning because in the corporate world that we both play in, adult learning people, learning and development trainers tend to be the power users within any organization. Right? Marketers are gathering data and putting subject matter experts on stage, but they're not really expert presenters. Neither with the sales team because the sales team has a really simple use case, etcetera, etcetera. Daily meetings, simple use case. Trainers, they're the ones that have the power user mentality.

So, by way of affirming what you're talking about, and you were just kind of pounding through, here's an exercise that I designed for when I was working for FedEx. Now, FedEx, and I think I'm not sharing anything that this is old statute of limitations easily way past for this. But FedEx at one point bought Kinko's, right? Individual office locations where you could pack and ship and print and that kind of stuff, which is now known as FedEx Office. And so FedEx Office, historically, had, you know, flew trainers around the country to, you know, there's probably a dozen locations in the Greater Portland area. Probably the same in you and the Greater Philadelphia area. That's a lot of trainers and a lot of road time and a lot of money.

And they figured out how to do it online. Like when this 99 week cohort. And they developed some killer stuff. They really put on their instructional designer hats and were developing this killer stuff. Now, the way I ended up getting involved is that the person who ran all of the trainers that were delivering all of these online employee onboarding trainings, still didn't think that her trainers were getting what they what could be as good as possible from the instructional design group. And for a big company like them, they had a whole team of just instructional designers. So I flew, we actually did an in person gig, where they brought in all the instructional designers from one team and all of the online trainers, facilitators for employee onboarding from the other team and we're in a big room with people.

I'm like, Okay, how do we kick things off here? And set up the challenge that you and I are just talking about right now? So I made up this kind of I don't even remember all the details because it was a long time ago. But I made up this fairly elaborate kind of opening hands on exercise that would be very typical of like in person training. Okay, everybody, stand up and then go line yourself, book along the wall by birth date, you know, from January 1 over here to December 31st over here. And then, turn to your neighbor on the right and turn to your neighbor on the left and learn one interesting factoid about them and then count off 1 through 6 or 1 through 8 or whatever it was. Now I want you to everybody, you know, and we did a couple of other things.

And now I want you to go back to the table wherever you're sitting, pick up your crap and okay, table 1 here, table 2's here, table 3. So I've just mixed everybody up. They've gone through all of this kind of stuff and they're all going, what the hell? And then I went, alright, table 1, table 2, table 3. Take what we just did and adapt it for online. Right? So I made I made was really purposeful about mixing in elements like, you know, stand up, go over there, turn to your neighbor, and talk.

You know, that kind of stuff. And I say all of that because the outcome from that particular exercise, and I've now done that for lots of organizations, the outcome from that exercise that they figured out as do everybody else is that you come back to what are the learning objectives. And now, do I have to do that part of the exercise that way? Am I just used to doing it that way because that's how we've always done it? Or do I have to do it that way? Or might I come up with a different way of doing it to reach the same learning objective? And while that might seem super obvious, even a bunch of people in a the power user setting didn't immediately go there in terms of thinking, Ah, wait a minute.

Let's get let's separate out what are our learning objectives. How are we getting we're at point a. We want our learners to get to point B.

Now, how do we get them there? And ultimately, they actually came up with some creative solutions for how we did all that crap. But more importantly, the point wasn't even how do we do that in person exercise online. The point was how do we get to people to to the to success with regard to the learning objective. So

Avish Parashar

Yeah. There's a whole, like, meta thing here I think we can get into, which is obviously because of your background on the topic. It's very interesting. We're talking about translating, you know, real world in person stuff to to virtual. But I think for any change, it's the same sort of meta process of, you know, instead of immediately saying, alright. Like, here's what we need to do. It's starting with, like, the what's the big picture goal, and why do we wanna do that?

And then working back down and say, oh, is that really the best way in this new format? And I think that can really happen in any change. It could be a switch to virtual. It could be we've got a new team or, oh, there's a new regulation came in. So it is a just a general like, would you certainly adopt it from a long time? Is this a kind of a general approach to change, not just technology and virtual presenting?

Roger Courville

Yeah. Yeah. I think we could go meta there. I remember reading you're familiar with, Chip and Dan Heath?

Avish Parashar

Sure. Mhmm.

Roger Courville

Wrote Made to Stick and, Switch. Yeah. And Switch is the the book that comes to mind. Right? And, we know from science that the information part of the change process is like the elephant in rider. It's like the rider. And then there's that buy in, that emotional or affective part of the process that is a pretty critical element from not just getting people to see where point B is relative to their being in point A, but then actually taking meaningful action in that direction.

And I'm not sure that I've got a, a magic insight there other than to corroborate. I think you're right. I think taking a step back and going, hey. How do we help involve people And not just preach it to them.

Avish Parashar

That. Like, without a a magical insight, you've been doing this for a long time. Probably there's probably still people resisting, but I think at this point, everyone's like, alright. Zoom, Teams, whatever. But you've been doing this for a long time. So you probably and especially in the early days, but even probably as as recently as right before COVID. Right? That's probably the that's probably when the resistance really had to come down, but you probably face a lot of resistance in people. You know?

Maybe the client hired you, but the actual people who had to use it might have been resistant. This will never work. I don't wanna learn this new thing. So how did you what were your sort of best practices around overcoming the the change resistance you'd feel on people, you know, before it became ubiquitous for everyone to have to get online or on Zoom and virtually?

Roger Courville

Yeah. No. That's fair.

And I think it would I mean, there's a nuance to answer based on what era in history since I'm since I go back to owe and Moses $5. So funny story as long as we're there. So when we left Microsoft, 2004, we left Microsoft and we start a company and one part of the company did the virtual event production, meaning you could outsource to us to do the production work just like you could outsource AV production when you want to put on an event at a local hall. The other part of the company did what we called training and adoption. Now, oftentimes, people in the world in the corporate world think training and adoption are the same thing and or training is just pushing about a bunch of information out of people. You know, anybody in the corporate world knows what it's like to have some new change initiative come down. You get an email from IT saying, Here's your new login.

And they think their world is done. Right? Next level up is, okay, maybe there is some training with regard to how some of this works, which is a form of knowledge transfer now, whatever. But really at the end of the day, your issue is adoption, as in behavior change. As in not just even do I know how to do it, but am I implementing it in, in fact, maybe even to the top level, am I implementing it in a manner that drives some kind of value? Top line, bottom line or whatever. So, one of the things that we did early on was we would work with we would be brought in by large telecom companies who were now selling this out stuff, right?

So they were licensing the technology from Microsoft or something like that. They would not only have to roll it out to their own 2,000 employees, but now they are now selling it or reselling it into the marketplace because, well, they've been selling audio conferencing and now they're place because, well, they've been selling audio conferencing and now they're adding to their portfolio of stuff. So we're working with this one European client. And we finally closed the deal, but interestingly, the senior VP that we had to communicate with to close the deal who ran the division that we were trying to get into would get email to his assistant. She would print the email, come into his office. He would dictate back to her the answer and then she would return the email. That was literally part of closing a deal this this early on.

You know what? I think to be a little more contemporary and perhaps a little more helpful, I think it's useful to understand what they started studying in the sixties called the diffusion of innovations. You don't have to go look that up. Geoffrey Moore popularized it in his book Car Housing the Chasm in like the early nineties. And it's to realize that there are there is a spectrum from visionaries who just love to dig in and take things apart and put them back together and take them apart, to early adopters, to, you know, an early majority to, you know, and it's kind of a big bell curve. And then at the other end are the late adopters and those who just will fricking not make a change unless they're absolutely forced to. Right? Yeah. And the truth is all our organizations have something like that. Right? So thinking about people in some monolithic way with regard to their relationship with technology, actually even transcends things like psychographics like age, right?

We often think of people's adoption of technology different based on whether they're traditional or baby boomers or genetics, millennials, Gen Z. But sometimes it's just a function of a psychographic based on something that might just be summed up in term you might have heard, digital natives versus digital immigrants. Sometimes there are older people who are digital natives and they've been in it for a long time. And sometimes there are digital immigrants, meaning they've been staying away from this stuff as much as possible until they finally just got forced into a change. I'm not sure that's any particular magic insight other than to realize that, if you're talking about it in an organizational level, thinking about it monolithically, like, okay, we're gonna implement this new project management system. Here's your instructions.

Avish Parashar

Mhmm.

Roger Courville

I mean, you could just talk softly and carry a big stick, or you might think about it a little more human level.

Avish Parashar

Yeah. And I think that's I think a lot of people do the thing about it with the the big stick and just like, well, there's a change you gotta do, so get on board or get out or but, yeah, I think humanistically and and actually listening to people and realizing it is it's funny. Like, you you talk about the printing the emails, and that was my dad up until not that long ago. He would print out the emails. I'm like, what are you doing, dad? And my parents are so technology, like, afraid, and my dad's gotten better about it. He'll do some stuff online, and I can send him emails, and he can actually buy stuff on Amazon.

But it's amazing how you think, you know, the technological advances of, like, the US versus India where their relatives all are. And, you know, obviously, India is a very tech forward country. Mhmm. But, you know, we had computers here. Like, we had a computer in our family since I was in 7th grade, which at this point is, like, 40 years ago. And my parents are so far behind their relatives, like, their generation of relatives from India. Like, they're all out there using WhatsApp and Zoom and Taddy.

And it's it's a joke. It's kinda funny, but at the same time, it was sort of sad because, like, you know, we're talking about video calling and stuff. Like, they could have been having, like, Skype calls with their relatives on the other side of the world for years now instead of just relying on the phone. Like, they were said to like, you talk about the connecting. It could have had a deeper connection, but because they're such digital immigrants and so resistant to it, it just so it's, like, humorous, but and I see that I get that feeling with change a lot where so many people, like, yeah. We wanna take a humanistic approach, but if people could just step into uncertainty a little bit, like, it opens up if you change your mind or your perspective around it a little bit, it sort of opens up a lot of opportunities both professionally, but also personally if you look at it. Right?

Roger Courville

You know, there wouldn't be a lot of change management consultants in the world if it was an easy topic Got it. 1st and foremost. Right? And I think there is often a lot of pressure to try to do things, particularly in the corporate world, at scale that we often forget the nuance that happens at the opposite end of scale, which is 1 to 1. Let's use, educating our children as an example. Right? There's pressure to have larger and larger classrooms because of because of, you know, financial pressure in the education system or something like that.

And yet at the interesting interestingly, the word educate comes from the Latin, educere, meaning to lead or draw out.

Avish Parashar

Oh, I didn't know that.

Roger Courville

To educate means to lead or draw out. And to lead or draw out, I need to meet you where you're at. Well, how do I meet you where you're at? I need to ask questions. I need to get to know Avish. I need to understand where he's at. And then I can help you connect the dots and maybe take not just mental ownership but affective ownership of going, Ah, now I see the value of getting to point B and then being part of co journeying with you in that direction.

Now, that's hard and time consuming enough with 1 student, let alone a classroom of 35 students. Right? And so, use that as an analogy in the corporate world where we can't do 1 on 1 mentoring for all 15,000 employees here. So now what? But at least if you're aware And by the way, if you're if you're listening to this, technology is now beginning to do that. Right? There are internal employee education systems that will use AI to assess and meet Avish right where he's at, which is different than where Roger's at versus where Avish's dad is at.

And then we'll serve

Avish Parashar

Your your audio just cut out. I can't hear you.

Roger Courville

Okay. I'll just I'll be

Avish Parashar

your back now.

Roger Courville

Okay. But it will you know, technology can implement you know, can help do mass mass 1 to 1 individualization and personalization. But I know exactly what you mean. My folks have done pretty alright with technology. And still yet, I was actually in another state visiting with them a couple weekends ago because it was they made me a deal on a car that I decided I couldn't refuse. So I went to this other state to buy the car and drive it home. And over the course of spending a couple days with my dad, I forget how it came up, but I just went and showed him the free version of, like, ChatGPT or Gemini from from Google.

Avish Parashar

And

Roger Courville

and at first, it was like, oh, yeah. No. I I don't need that. I mean, I got my way of doing things. And I'm like, dad. And let's just take something that you care about.

He's a cook. He's a gourmet cook. Let's take something you care about. Right? You go into your refrigerator. You got 5 things.

You got jalapenos. You got cream cheese. You got, sausage. You got, you know, whatever. Let's type a question into chat JPT and see what it comes back with for a couple creative recipes for you with he's like, oh, bam. You know? And so a couple of the other things, he's a he's a nutritionist and, you know, I'm just setting him up with an app or a website and just show him a couple of things that applied to things that he cared about, all of a sudden, like, bam, the brain exploded.

Does that answer the question entirely for our clients in a corporate world? You may or may not be able to individually tie change from where someone is at to lead or draw out them to the next level to that whatever. But if that's the basis of what you got in mind and you're getting creative with how to do that within your team, within your division, that kind of thing, I think it helps to realize that not everybody's starting from the same place. So

Avish Parashar

Well, it's such a an awesome management lesson about and and the root of educate to draw out. Like, I I really like and appreciate that, and it's funny. One of my recent podcast guests who that episode will be out by the time this one comes out, because it's scheduled to go out next week, He he did this whole thing on psychological sees an expert on psychological safety, and he talked about Google. And Google keeps trying all these different things, and one was project Aristotle, which is where they came with psychological safety. But what he said was interesting, he said one of their other they did an experiment at Google, which is they took a group, and they wanna see, do we really need managers? What if we just didn't have middle management? And Mhmm.

They ran the experiment, and he said, you know, the result was it turns out, yes. We do need middle managers. He said, but what they found is the number one most important thing for the manager to do. The the skill they needed the most was coaching skills. Like, it wasn't about the manager's skill at the job or their ability to, like, drive results.

It was, can they coach, which essentially is can they draw out. Right? Can they educate? So

Roger Courville

Mhmm.

Avish Parashar

If you've got a 15,000 person organization, you can't necessarily do do one to 1, but most organizations have hierarchical structures where you've got a manager who's got maybe 5, 10 direct reports. Now that person probably can if we value management in the real role of it. So I I think there it's not just one to one mentor. It's like when you're looking down, what is your and, again, the meta question. Like, what is your real goal and job here? And I think if more managers and leaders saw that, it's not just to get the result at the end of the day. It's to get the most out of my people by helping them develop, whether it's in adopting change or technology or anything.

It's it's such a a valid point there. And and I love your example of the the recipes, because I've started doing that with chat gpt. Me too. I literally did that today. I'm like I'm like, hey. I have I have a chat specifically just for food stuff, and I'm like, hey. I got some ground turkey in my fridge I gotta use.

Give me five possible suggestions for this. And it came back, and I'm like, alright. I'll probably make that one. It's just like it so as a person who works with creativity and teaches creativity, sometimes just that, like, blank slate is so hard to overcome. And AI now is a new thing. It's like it's just such a useful way of getting started. Like, I don't often do what the chat GPT tells me, but it gets me over my procrastination, and then I take what it gives me as my kind of spark to get get running.

And I I kinda wanna build a love as we're kinda coming to the end here, whether it's AI or virtual or you know, you strike me as a person who when, is that like a precipice of a decision, you don't shy away from moving forward because there's it's gonna be hard. And I wanna talk a little bit about your latest thing, which I always find fascinating because usually for me when by the time I get the kids down, it's, like, 7:30 at night. All I wanna do is watch TV and go to sleep. I got no energy or anything else. But you have, I don't know when. I would say recently. You've got your business.

You got your own thing, your fractional c, c level person executive. And then you decided, hey. You know what? I wanna also get a doctorate, which is for a lot of people, that's just a full time thing, and you're doing it kind of on the side. So, I wanted you to share a little bit about what that's all about, why you did it, and kinda what your thought process was when you looked at the workload, the time, the the overwhelm of it, and how you kinda went through the processing. You know what? I'm gonna make this work even though it's a whole big commitment.

Roger Courville

Well, you know, since I've already confessed that I've been in the industry that I've been in for 25 years, I'm either 30 years old and started when I was 5, or I'm I'm a little closer to years old and started when I was 5 or I'm a little closer to midlife now. So, you know, something about a divorce in there, you know, that tends to shake things up. You know, there's science that actually shows that the nature of our intelligence evolves over time. And I'm not calling myself intelligent. I'm saying that there is a there is it is in the first part of life when we are most adept at growing in what we might think of IQ and EQ kinds of intelligence. But in the latter part of life, your intelligence shifts to more of an EQ wisdom sort of intelligence. And somewhere along the way, you know, since particularly since I wrote books and consulted and trained and I was kind of the subject matter expert in whatever I happened to be working on, I just decided that I wanted to spend more time working with people on things that, from my perspective, were more important than Zoom and PowerPoint. Right? So I went back to seminary and started working on my doctorate ministry.

And, you know, I spent a lot of time, for instance, one of the things I've done for several years now is work with guys that are in addiction recovery residency where they go into like a 2 year recovery program. So, you know, because they're coming off the street and getting off drugs and whatever. And that doesn't make me a counselor, but it's impactful at a different level. Right? In the place where you're making a difference and contributing. So whether I end up being a church pastor or a seminary professor or something like that, to me is less important than the application of that. Whereas, you know, and I still love working with clients doing, you know, around this virtual stuff because I'm, you know, I've been doing this so long.

I can generally, even people who don't think they have something to learn do have something to learn. And I've been doing it so long that I can provide value there. Importantly, for me, part of that change was something that actually probably also relates to your own yes, and work. And the way that I express it is, do you have a why that's bigger than your how? And in my case, I just decided I had a why bigger than my how. And that even though I was going back to grad school in my fifties and, you know, a late in life student relative to many of the other people in the program that I'm in, I just decided, you know what? God willing, I'm gonna wake up 10 years older 10 years from now anyway.

So I'm just gonna get on a path and keep on going. And, and maybe I'm just enough of a geek so that reading books and writing papers is, something that I actually take some enjoyment in. But it has a purpose, you know. So now I'm done with all my class work for my doctorate. I'm now working on the thesis phase and then there's a research project. And frankly, there are times when I'm a little beat down because I feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew. But I also know we all have been there in the corporate world too.

You know, from startup to Microsoft, there are plenty of times it's like you get some new number and say, wait a minute, that's how much business we're supposed to do in the next 3 months? How the heck am I going to generate that many leads or that much business or get that product or project done? And at some point, it might be a little over simplistic, but it came back for me to have it on why that's bigger than your how.

Avish Parashar

I love it. That is a it's it's in my kind of verbiage, it's identifying what you wanna say yes and to so then you know what you can say yes but to. It's like you're gonna have to say no and yes but. But if you don't take the time to figure out what's really important to me, and that's what I wanna say yes to, then you're gonna say yes to everything. So, I think that's a great kinda final little thought there because we're kinda to the end of our time anyways, but, yeah, really find o find your why that's bigger than your how. And and, again, I I don't know how you felt, and I still feel like I'm in that process. I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what that is for me, because I love presenting.

I love speaking, but, you know, I've got in terms of, like, inner motivation, I'm still kinda figuring out what that is. So I just wanna say for me and for a lot of people, I think it's a process. I think sometimes people get discouraged because, like, well, I don't have my why, so I guess I'm just gonna go back to doing things the same way. Was it, was it something that sort of percolated in your brain for a long time before you really were ready to act on it, or was it more like you're just like, oh, yeah. This is what I wanna do. Let me go do it.

Roger Courville

Oh, quite the former, my friend. That was a long, painful process. I've done every, you know, psychometric test from strength finder to big 5 to, you know, all there was a lot of self discovery along the way because because there were a lot of side roads. I mean, I'm just naturally curious and found a lot of things interesting. And for me, one of the the struggles that I had, and frankly, I think this is true for a lot of people, it's that we live in a culture, at least here in the West, that frankly often tells you to go inside yourself. What do you really want? And that kind of thing.

And yet, interestingly, and this kind of relates to my doctor work in relational spirituality and the relationship to attachment theory, but I would argue that the only way we really know ourself is relationally. Meaning, I can only observe myself so well and there are some people external to me that can provide me feedback on me in a way that I couldn't ever no matter how much personal reflection I write. I mean, anybody who's married, well, let's figure that out in one way or another. And so, I think we are made I think we're actually made for connection and relationship. And so, part of that wandering for me was a lot of self determination, head down, writing in my journal, and trying to figure stuff out in a way that, could have been a lot more efficient if I had been smarter 30 years ago.

Avish Parashar

Yeah. It's a I was just on a call with a personal base who was, like, a networking day.

Saw me speak. They just wanna learn a little bit about my story, and so I share with them, like and I shared this in my keynote a lot of time is, you know, I've done improv for 30 plus years now, and I love it, and that's kinda been my living. When I first was introduced the idea of improv comedy, it was a friend in college saying you should do improv.

You'd be good at it. And I said, yeah. But I said, yeah, but it's not for me. Yeah. But I wouldn't be good at it. And it it was his nagging that eventually got me to just go see a show, which I had never done. I was like, oh my god.

That looks so much fun. And and then when it was time to graduate, I was gonna go get an engineering job. It was other people telling me, oh, have you thought about performing? You should go you should do that. And then after that, when I was doing improv, it was someone else seeing what I did and saying, you know, this would be a good corporate team building workshop. To your point, it was always other people, like, seeing something that because, you know, we get tunnel vision. We get our own here's our path.

And I think you're so right. I'm I'm the same way. I love morning pages and journaling and brainstorming and going along walks in nature just to think, But it is amazing how much more efficient it can be if you just are willing to interact with other people, and I would say open up to them a little bit. Right? Because sometimes we keep this stuff inside of us. Like, here's something I'm thinking about, but I'm gonna hide it. So people can't I mean, sometimes we're afraid they're gonna mock us or judge us, but it also cuts off the opportunity for them to help us, and see things in us maybe we don't we don't see. Gosh. That's I love so that's what your thesis is on.

Something not obviously, not that specifically, but relations and how

Roger Courville

Yeah. Relational, specifically, an area or discipline called relational spirituality. Kinda based on the premise that we a thing or

Avish Parashar

is that something you came up with?

Roger Courville

No. No. It's a thing. Oh. It's a thing. Yeah. No. That's the kind of the top level topic kind of based on the premise that we were we were actually created to be connectors and to be connected.

And, and probably the even if you even if you don't necessarily think of yourself from a theistic worldview perspective, the thing that I would point to is just one science and one piece of intuition. One piece of science that came out in the middle of last year, you can look this up in July issue of Scientific American, is that one of the things that scientists found out is that as we interact, in particular, when we, you know, trade and and build stories together, that our brainwaves begin to synchronize. So you think about how, say, your marriage gets better and better, hopefully, because you start, in a sense, thinking each other's thoughts. There's actually a scientific basis for that. Same in the context of attachment theory of a child and a mom. They actually begin to co regulate together, affectively. So there's very much a scientific basis for that nature of connection.

But here would be my even just exhortation with regard to observing that from, from an intuitional perspective. We all are made to connect and be connected, meaning we all desire connection. Our deepest desire, I would argue, is to know and be known. And yet, at the same time, that also touches down in some places that are really scary, which is why we put up walls and other things. But, how we relate to spouse, God, children, whatever that happens to be, is all driven from a very something that's utterly core to us that I think is not only scientifically valid, but, theologically valid as well.

Avish Parashar

That's great. And that's, I think, a perfect place to end because whether you realize it or not, this brings us almost entirely full circle because at the very beginning, we talked about what you did, and your whole point was that you got into virtual presenting because it became a way for people to connect with each other more effectively. So, like, your whole kind of journey has really been about this, so it makes total sense that this is where your kinda doctorate now now leads to. So it's a perfect sort of place. I'm gonna wrap up with 2 quick questions. Before I do, this has been great. If people wanna learn more about you or work with you on you, you got a couple different ways, a couple of days we can learn more about you.

Where should people go? How should they connect with you?

Roger Courville

Well, I mentioned it's top, rogercorvill. com. And if you can't spell that because there's not lots of Corvilles, and or you're not looking at Avish's webpage or or wherever you found this, virtualvenues.com is our virtual event production company. And, happy to help you come alongside you with regard to taking your virtual and hybrid events to the next level so you can focus on something other than the tech. So rogercoryville.comorvirtualvenues.com.

Avish Parashar

Fantastic. I love it. And alright.

Two quick questions. Number 1, totally random. What is your favorite Rush song?

Roger Courville

Oh, that's, it's not even close. Losing it.

Avish Parashar

Oh my goodness. That is an answer I probably won't hear very often, but that is a

Roger Courville

No. You won't.

Avish Parashar

One. So as as listeners, you may or may not know this yet depending how far you I'm a huge Rush fan. I run a Rush Facebook group, and, Roger's a big Rush fan. I believe you're part of the group, though maybe you're not as active.

Roger Courville

Yeah. No. I'm still there. I'm just not very active anymore. But, yeah, I've seen Rush 4 times. Losing It is one of those kind of like deep cut tracks on an album from the early eighties called Signals. And if you are a musician, it has some really interesting time signature times when they're in 5 4, which is really rare in rock music.

So there you go. Yeah.

Avish Parashar

And I know nothing about music. I just know it's a beautiful, poignant song. It's one of Russia's, like, slower, more somber songs, but that's a great that's a great pick. Alright. And second one, I ask, everyone on the pod who who guess, well, my one of my premises, one of my whys is I honestly believe the world will be a better place if everyone just started with a default mindset of yes and instead of yes but. Just we're more open minded, positive, and collaborative, what is a small change that if you believe you made one this small change, it would make the world a better place? Well, thank you

Roger Courville

for the question. So, the short answer is take someone you don't know very well out to coffee and say, tell me your story.

Avish Parashar

Wow.

Roger Courville

And so, actually, there is that is the genesis of, of my doctoral research.

Avish Parashar

Really?

Roger Courville

Yep. Albeit from a from a spiritual perspective, take a coworker out to out to coffee and say, tell me your story.

Avish Parashar

That's amazing. I have never read anyone's, doctoral, you know, dissertation. I might be curious to

Roger Courville

read yours. Read another one after I've done.

Avish Parashar

I might be curious to read yours. You've just dropped a lot of great info. That's fantastic. So thank you for being on here, Roger. They will have you back at some point. This is great. I'm sure there's a lot more we could we could go into.

And thank you everyone for listening. Be sure to check out rogercorville.com and, virtual venues. com. And if you wanna make the world a better place, go find someone you don't know, take them out for coffee, and ask them. Tell me your story. Love it. Thank you so much, Roger.

This was fantastic.

Roger Courville

My pleasure.


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