In this conversation with change-management expert April Callis-Birchmeier (CCMP™, PMP®, CSP®), we unpack her R.E.A.D.Y. framework from her READY, Set, Change! Book and framework and translate it into practical moves you can make this quarter. We cover how to turn corporate buzzwords into relevant, relatable stories, why one accountable executive sponsor changes everything, what “just send an email” thinking gets wrong, and how to handle resistance as a signal that people are finally engaging. April also shares the behind-the-scenes story of Michigan’s Healthy Michigan Plan rollout and how simple choices (like naming and login labels) can remove adoption friction fast.
Key Takeaways
R.E.A.D.Y. in brief: Relevant/relatable messaging; Engage leaders as sponsors; Advanced, multi-channel communication; Develop support & training; “Y = Why” to address resistance and cement adoption.
Story beats slide decks. Use everyday metaphors and images to explain benefits; tailor stories for execs vs. frontline.
One real sponsor > many names. The accountable “throat to choke” must be visible, vocal, and equipped weekly with talking points.
Kill “just send an email.” Over-reliance on email reduces attention; combine channels (leaders’ voice, signage, pop-ups, text, live touchpoints).
Vendor training ≠ your training. Customize to your workflows so people know what to pick and why.
Welcome resistance. It’s engagement; loop back to the Why and pair mindset shift with behavior change.
Relevant Links
April’s site & training: Springboard Consulting (book, courses, CCMP™ prep). Springboard Consulting
Unedited Transcript
Avish
Hello, April, and welcome to the podcast. How are you?
April
I'm great. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Avish
Absolutely. I am super excited because I know you talk about change, and I just got a copy your book and that's what I talk about. And then I found out that without me even knowing it after I invited you on the podcast, that you actually have an acting background as well.
So this is doubly appropriate.
April
Yay.
Avish
I always love talking to people, you know, who sort of get what I do a little bit more. So before we get into all that, because other people who are listening perhaps don't know about you, could you give us just the one minute, April bio, kind of what you do, how you work, what you're, you know, in one minute, what you're sort of.
April
Sure. I'm an organizational change management expert and certified change management professional and project management professional, and I work with organizations who are going through change, which I think is every organization at the moment, and I help their people get ready for that change. And so part of what I do is work directly with leaders and in a consulting sort of arrangement with them. I speak a lot for organizations who are trying to communicate with their teams and let them know what's happening. And then I also spend a lot of time training change management professionals so they can become certified.
Avish
Oh, that's fantastic. I didn't realize that you also train change management professionals. So this is great. And you are the author of a book called Ready, Set Change, which if you're watching the video, you can see you've got a nice big pop up banner behind you. But, but I read the book and it's, it's great. And you've got a whole five step framework in there, which, which I want to talk about. Before we get into that though, I'd like to talk a little bit about your.
Your background, sort of. You've been talking about change. You've been in business for a while. You mentioned you're a certified change management professional, I believe you did not mention that you are also a certified speaking professional.
April
Oh, I didn't mention that. You're right, a CSP as well, which.
Avish
Is shocking because when speakers are talking to each other, that's like the little chevron. You got to like, let people know. I am a csp. Now, for those of you listening who are unfamiliar with the National Speakers association, this might be meaningless to you, but, but to those of us in the association, it's, it's a big deal.
April
So, yes, it is huge. Deal.
Avish
Yeah, you've got, so you've got lots of credentials, lots of credibility, which is great. So let's talk a little bit about the, the credibility and kind of how did your change management journey begin?
April
Well, you know, my change management journey was a little bit accidental, as many of our careers tend to be. I had been an adjunct professor, I had been doing a lot of consulting and presenting for different groups. And I met a woman at an ASTD meeting when they used to be called that before everybody realized what you were saying that you were going to. But I went to this American Society of Training and Development meeting and she met me and said, you know, building a team to lead change, and I think you'd be a perfect match for the team. I had no idea what she was really talking about, but I said, great, I'll email you. And we were in touch. And she hired me to lead a huge ERP project, the change portion, with two other consultants.
So three of us were going to lead these five modules at the University of Michigan. And so it was the first university big ERP implementation where we were bringing in the student administration pieces, which usually the ERPs didn't have any of that. We were a beta school just for.
Avish
The non super corporate types. Could you define what ERP is for people?
April
Sure. ERP is an enterprise resource planning system. And usually ERPs are used in businesses for finance and for HR. So that it's kind of an umbrella system that talks to different systems. So you have everything in one place. There's one source of truth, but that hadn't been done for universities at that time. You know, university student administration, ensuring that our students were billed correctly for their tuition, and then everything from matriculation to graduation, keeping track of all their grades.
I mean it was really massive. And so that was an exciting project. And I was a change management lead there. I was paired with two Arthur Andersen. At the time it was Anderson Consulting. Now it's Accenture, but it was Anderson Consulting. I was paired with two fabulous consultants and the three of us worked together for a number of years implementing that system and helping people move through that change.
And so that was enlightening and it was really where I got my feet in organizational change management.
Avish
Oh, wow. And I think, you know, I do a lot of motivational, you know, quote unquote speaking. And I think I just love the, the kind of part you just went over real quickly was I didn't really know what it was, but I said yes. And just. And it's amazing how sometimes Those little like, let me just see what happens. Just absolutely kind of change a trajectory of your career in life.
April
Yes. And I did, I said yes. And let me learn what this is. I was very, very for fortunate to have met my, my boss there at the, at the meeting. And I felt like it launched me on the perfect trajectory for me because, you know, part of what is, doesn't make sense to people about organizational change management. It's like, why do you need that? Well, organizational change management is many things, but primarily it is like this.
It's like a three layered. It's a three legged stool. I'll say three legged stool. Communication. Right. Making sure that everybody knows what's happening, what's going on. And also training and development.
So being able to teach people how to use something new and be successful with it. And then the third part is like the organizational business process redesign and organizational structure change. So those three pieces make up organizational change management. And I had been an actor. I was, was in a. I had graduated from college with a theater degree and I went out with a theater company to do Jack and the Beanstalk all over the Midwest.
Avish
Really?
April
Yes, we were, we were in Kentucky and we were in Ohio and Indiana and you name it, it was a Midwest state. We were there and we performed the entire summer. I think we started in May, got done around, you know, September or so. And I instantly got out of this experience of being on the road as an actor and ran to my university and said to my department chair, I have to go to grad school because I certainly can't make a living like this. And that's where I started to, you know, I. He said, wish granted, go talk to the food and health service or food and housing services, they have a job for you. And then I was able to work my way through grad school.
Avish
And so when you decided that, all right, the life of a traveling actor wasn't for you, what did you go back to grad school for?
April
Communications. I did my master's in communications and at that time I had learned what training and development was. I had been doing some consulting with people who were doing training and I thought, that's the thing, that's what I want to do. So I did my master's in communication and I specialized in training and development.
Avish
Well, again, going back to the motivational bit there I also love is that you did the thing which I see so many people not do, which is you gave it a shot. You didn't romanticize this thing about being an actor and sit there and wish for 30 years you could be an actor. Like you just said, I'm going to go do it. And you quickly discovered that's not for me, which isn't a failure, it's learning, right. And then you adapt it and then, you know. But I think so many people just kind of don't take any action and just think about what they want to do, never even learning if it's right. So I just love how your kind of journey progressed and got you to this beautiful place now.
And so before I get into the kind of how you work with change in the, in the ready set change in the framework, I'm curious because, you know, I talk to a lot of groups about change and I do it, I don't want to say more superficially, but I do it a little bit more at the mindset, the motivation. You know, I don't do the, I don't have the consulting arm, you know, yet. We'll see if that comes. But I'm just curious, do you find that our. Does most your business come to you? Do people come to you because they're like, we need help with change or are you having to kind of educate them and be like, look, you've got the ERP rolling out and you've got the emails you're going to send, but there's a whole extra level to make this effective. So do you find that like people are already open to it or do you have to kind of go and convince them that they need this?
April
Usually when they're contacting me, they're already convinced that they know that they need some help. They have a big change happening. They're not quite sure where to begin. And so one of the biggest projects that I've worked on was for the state of Michigan. I implemented the change management plan and the effort for the Michigan Medicaid expansion in 2014 and I only had a six month lead. They contacted me in September and said, boy, we really need some help with this change. So that was people who knew me from some other work that I had done and brought me in and I ended up working with the department for about eight years in a consulting capacity for them.
And it was a phenomenal success for the state. We had, you know, it was part of the, the ACA and which was the, if you remember, it was the Affordable Care act, you know, healthcare. And so it was just a simple change in the sense that we weren't doing well. It was a simple change, but it was not easy.
Avish
I'll say that yeah, that's like many things.
April
Yes, like many things. And, you know, it was a very important change for the state of Michigan. What it meant was that the eligibility to join Medicaid was expanded, so the, the eligibility requirements were loosened so that people earning a little bit higher income but having still need could join the program and they previously couldn't. And so one of the things that I thought was so interesting about that particular change was the fact that we were extending this to family, like a family of four who was earning up to about $120,000. And people felt like, wow, that's, that's pretty generous. Well, they had to meet other criteria. But one of the pieces of that, that expansion was the fact that a family of four who was, you know, both parents had jobs but they were earning less than that, could not get any kind of government health care.
And nobody wanted to be on Medicaid particularly. And so we wrote the program as though it were a private program. We gave it a private name, Healthy Michigan Plan. And it was like an hmo and you had a card and you had to pay for a health savings account and the whole works. And people really liked this idea. We had beautiful branding and had worked with an ad agency to do some great art. And we had this fabulous rollout where we thought we would have maybe 60,000 people join within that first year.
And that was like a big goal. We weren't sure we'd make it, but by August of that year, we were up to 100,000. We ended up with like 116,000 members in that plan. It was very helpful.
Avish
And this sort of starts leading into the, the model because you, the story is in your book. So anyone wants more detail, I would, you know, go check that out. But it's funny, we talk about simple but not easy. I love how like one of the simple examples in the book is just the login page and how like the name was something I forgot. The original name was something kind of obscure, very technical sounding. What's that?
April
My cam.
Avish
My cam. And you're like, let's say that I am login, right? Like letters, M, letter, I login. Like, oh, that. But it's like these things that we think are overly simplistic, like that's not going to make a difference. But sometimes with change, especially just, you know, changing it so people don't have the association of Medicaid, you know, he's even. And I don't want this.
You know, this is not a political podcast. But even the naming right of the the national program, the, the people on one side, this is the Affordable Care act, the other side is like, it's Obamacare. And then later on you find people saying, oh no, no, I don't have Obamacare, I have the Affordable Care Act. Like, but the, the simplest things. And that kind of leads into your, your, your model, which is the first. So you have the word ready as an acronym and the R stands for relevant and relatable messaging.
April
Yes, yes.
Avish
And so I love to go through it. And this I think is an example of that. Like you change the messaging in a way that made it more relevant, more relatable, and people suddenly embraced it. So if you're going into an organization and they've got some change coming, whether it's AI or ERP or. I do, I've done a number of programs like, oh, we're rolling out new corporate values and we want people to actually do something with them. Like things like that.
April
Yes.
Avish
How does the, the, the R, the relevant, relatable messaging work in that context?
April
Well, you know, what I find is, I mean, we, we talk about this, about the fact that people love story. You know, you and I talk about those kinds of things in our national Speakers association. And yet I find that so many times an organization will just ignore the fact that people love stories and they will listen to stories and they remember stories. And so when I'm looking for some way to get across a message with my audience, with my, you know, stakeholders, I have to figure something out that is relevant to them, that they can, that they can see the relevancy in their work or in their project or in their life and also something that is relatable to them. So if I said, well, you know, I, it's as if you were, you know, flying to France every week and you had to, you know, maybe make a detour one time, it would be really hectic. Well, that's not very relatable. Nobody flies to France every week.
I mean, I don't anyway. And, and I doubt that, you know, many of us are jet setters in that way. So I have to make sure that what I'm talking about is relatable also that people, real people can relate to it. That some like an example is like talking about, you know, grocery shopping or talking about, you know, driving to work or driving to an appointment, just the day to day relatable types of activities that we have. When I can pair those things with a bigger idea and create a storyline that really helps that messaging get across, that helps people understand the change and really understanding the change is that first step into the mindset shift of the change. And I have found different techniques. It's not always clear to me what this story is going to be.
And sometimes it, it takes a little thrashing around. Sometimes I'll have multiple storylines. Also, I may have a relevant, relatable example or story for my executives and I may have one that's for my stakeholders who are maybe frontline leaders or frontline employees working in a customer service sort of environment. So I could have different storylines. But what I want to avoid is this tendency that we have to copy the buzzwords that we get from a software company like interoperability. It's streamlined and, and, you know, interoperable. And you'll be able to, you know, have this wonderful AI function.
You're like, what are you talking about? So it's not relevant or relatable. And, and I think that's a mistake that we make up front. We have to take the time to figure it out. What's that story? What would make sense about this change? And we can describe it not in a condescending way, but in a very understandable, meaningful way.
Avish
So I have a couple questions on this. So for people listening who are going through change, but maybe they're not the high level executive who's in a position to, you know, book April to come in and work with them, but maybe someone's reading a book and saying, I want to start this process. How do you, or how do they go about mining and finding some of these stories?
April
Oh, that's a great question. I, I like to do a couple of different things. I like to see if it compares, if I can compare it to a story that already exists. Like, is this, is this change, like, is this a big transformational change or is this a small incremental change? Right. When I'm thinking about the type of change it is, then I'm thinking about the type of story that may work. So I'll look at some archetypes of, of different stories, such as, you know, the story of the journey, right?
Like we've embarked on a journey and here we are starting out and now we're, you know, and, and as we know, a story has a beginning which really kind of establishes the circumstances, the setting, and then the beginning of the story kind of morphs into the middle of the story. In the middle is where everything, you know, happens. There's some sort of conflict. You know, somebody wants this and somebody else wants this, or we think we're moving On a journey in a direction and suddenly we run into, you know, a crisis and then the crisis is resolved. And then we move into that ending of the story. Like, what did we do to resolve the crisis and what did we learn going forward and how have we adjusted? So I try to compare it to, I'll think about different story structures and think, well, that doesn't really fit, you know, David and Goliath type of a structure doesn't fit here.
You know, the journey, maybe the hero's journey fits here. And then I also will work with images. So I will put up, I have, you know, probably 20 slide decks of some random images and I'll put up random images and I'll ask the, the. Some stakeholders, like a representative team, stakeholders, leaders, to think about what does this image make you think about when you are thinking about this change? Right. Like we define what the change is. Here's what the change is.
We define what the benefit of that change is. And then we think about, does this image evoke any thoughts about this particular change? And sometimes we'll get really interesting ideas and then we just kind of have to shape those into a story that's relatively relatable and a story that's very relevant to the stakeholders. Because when you, when you hit on that story and it doesn't have to be a big, big story when you hit on it, though, it's. It's one of those things that makes people instantly say, oh, oh, I get it.
Oh, I get it now. I get it. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to describe the benefit of the change. So I do have an example of this. When I, when I was working at Michigan, I was trying to just. Well, my boss, who was just, she was brilliant, she was trying to describe this change to some stakeholders. And she tried several times, but she was very technical.
That's why she was so brilliant. And I love the fact that she understood, like she was a technical genius and she needed people who were not technical around her to assist her thinking, you know, and I was one of those. So she was always describing the relational database, the enterprise resource planning system, and how it would all connect to each other. She was always talking about the technology and she couldn't get across the idea of what this would mean for the people who were going to be implementing it. And we needed them to get on board because you can't go out alone. We had to have them on board. And at the time, my kids were really young and I was running around with Kids in the car, going to do errands and you know, dealing with the car seats and all of that.
And as I was, you know, frustrated with having to go to six different stores on a Saturday, you know, to get groceries, the pharmacy, I had to go the hardware to go the bank, go buy shoes, you know, all these stores, in and out of all these different stores, I was so aggravated. And then, you know, we went, we have in Michigan, we have these Meijer Thrifty Acres. And so I then went to Meyer Thrifty Acres the next week and found it was so simple because everything that I was looking for was in one place. Groceries, hardware section, pharmacy, a bank, they even sold shoes. So I was like, huh, this, this is the thing that we need to tell our people that we're trying to get involved. This is the story. So I went and told them this story about running all these places versus running to one place and going in one place, getting everything I need and coming out.
And it saved me four or five hours that weekend. And when they heard that, they said, oh, we totally get it. They understood that the new ERP was going to be the one stop shop for them. And when they understood that they were good, we, it made sense. And they constantly said it to each other and even through eight upgrades and then a brand new system, they kept saying don't break it, don't break the, don't break the meer. Because they love the way it worked.
Avish
That's great. And all right, so that's, you know, look for the stories, figure out what the benefit of the change is. Find the story that relates to that. The second question before we move on to the next letter is when you say kind of this messaging so you find the stories, who are you rolling this out to?
Is this like in conversation? Is it like on that poster in the elevator lobby that you know, the mission statement that come like how do you then get this message out there?
April
Yes. And to everyone that we can find. Yes, it has to be, it has to be coming out of the leaders mouths, has to be in our, in our written communication. And, and as I mentioned, you know, sometimes we have a little bit of different storylines for different audience members. So just, you know, tracking on that, making sure that you're using, you know, the example or the story that you've created for that group with that group.
But yes, it's everywhere. It's in communication. It's in everything that we're doing to help people remember the benefit of the change. Right. Because in change, like it's difficult, we're in the midst of it, it's hard, it's uncomfortable, and I'm really unhappy. But if I can keep in my mind what that end goal is, the benefit of the change is that I had one place to go, I went one place, I got everything I needed and I came back out. Now am I sad to give up my personally built, you know, custom database that I have, you know, tweaked until it's just exactly how I wanted? Yes. But I am benefiting from because I am going to have one place to go.
Instead of having to go to every single department and ask for their students grades, I'm going to now go one place, get everything I need about that student and come back out. And so when I constantly focus on that benefit of the change with that story, I can help people move through. And it's going to be in written communication, in spoken communication, and we'll use it to frame a number of different types of scenarios to explain what's our next step.
Avish
Okay. And I love that, just the clear communication to get people on board. And you had mentioned in that first step a couple of times, you mentioned getting, communicating and connecting with stakeholders which kind of leads to the E which is to engage leaders as sponsors. So I think this is a good, good little distinction because we think we got to get leadership on board. And you do, but you're not saying you have to get like every leader on board. It's like you, you kind of get your sponsors, the people who back it and, and get their support on it, right?
April
Yes, we need one sponsor. Sometimes people want to have a lot of sponsors, but we just really need one person that is accountable for the change. My, one of the PMO directors I used to work with, he say the throat to choke, right. This is the person that has the budget, that has the power and they are in charge of this change. And so we need that one person. But then that sponsor needs to cascade information through their leadership team and, and having this throat to choke, I think is really important. And being connected with them so that they can engage all of the users and all the other leaders that they need to influence is really the most important piece.
And one of the things that I found in working with sponsors was that they're very busy and they're also a little bit intimidating because sometimes they're high up in the organizations, the CFO or maybe even the CEO. And you know, I kind of early in my career felt like they knew what to do. I thought, well, they Must know what to do.
I mean, they're. My gosh, she's boss of this whole company, right? Like, of course they know what to do. But as I grew in my own skill set and in my experience leading projects, I started to see that many times the sponsor did not know what they were supposed to do. And it took a sponsor who was kind of stepping out on me a little bit. She was not fully engaged or interested in sponsoring the change the way that I knew it needed to be helped and be sponsored. And I kind of realized it had to be me to help her understand what to do. And. And I started.
I created a tool for her, and then I worked with her every week. Just. I only had 10 or 15 minutes a week with her, but I would work with her every week with this tool and talk to her about what she needed to be communicating, let her know what was going out under her email, what activities I needed her to show up at, like, a town hall or some sort of event. And then I wanted her to know kind of what. What the word on the street was about this change. Because sometimes, you know, you'll see little pockets of resistance pop up. And I wanted to make sure she was aware of those things.
And then I also ensured that she had a key message every week that she could just repeat in any conversation. And that she also was able to talk about celebrating milestones, you know, whether that was something like, you know, we started user acceptance testing, or if it was something like, you know, oh, Avish is, you know, getting married. That's exciting. You know, some sort of personal celebration that she could share with others. And when I started using this tool with her on a weekly basis, I could see the pieces that I had previously missed with other sponsors. And then I designed a process to go with the sponsor. And my process is that I do a kickoff just for that sponsor.
We go through kind of past projects. They've led what went well, what didn't go well. I give them feedback about what I've heard in the environment, about how things have been going and what people are worried about with this particular change. And then we really dive into their strengths, and I figure out what they're good at. And then I. I have them doing things they're good at all the time. You know, if they're great at telling stories, I send them out.
You know, go talk to everyone. If they're better at metrics, maybe they're not so good in front of a crowd. I might. I might have them, you know, run a dashboard Create a dashboard that they can speak to or, or write about. Every week, you know, I'm trying to figure out, like, how do I help them connect and engage with stakeholders. And then the stakeholders, I've got them always kind of in front of the sponsor in their mind, so that they are thinking about, you know, that frontline, that frontline employee, that, that supervisor, thinking about that manager or somebody with their salesperson who's out on the road. And then, you know, we're targeting our messaging.
I also ask my sponsors to help think about that relevant, relatable story. So that's what we do with, with the leaders and then we cascade down.
Avish
So I would think the, the, the sponsor is a real critical component of making this change. Effort, success. So how do you. Because I could almost imagine a scenario where like a CEO brings you in, but they're like, oh, you know, like, Jane's gonna be working with you on this. But, you know, Jane's not particularly interested in working with your like, so how do you make sure you get the right sponsor?
April
Well, it's not. I don't always have the right sponsor. I mean, sometimes I have terrible sponsors or sponsors that don't know the change, don't care about the change, are not on board with the change, even though they might say to the CEO, yeah, totally, I'm on board with the change. But they might turn around and like, roll their eyes. I mean, that happens. And you know, my goal, My goal is to do everything that I can humidly do to help that sponsor connect and, and do what they're supposed to do. But there have been times where I have asked if we could pair the sponsor with somebody else, and I might pair them with somebody who has more experience or has a little more political leverage in the organization.
You know, that's. Sometimes sponsors are seen as weak. And if you have a, a sponsor that is perceived in a. As. As having weakness in the organization, you're absolutely. I think it's important to pair them up with somebody strong and not to, not to tell them that. I mean, I'm not going to say to them, you know, I rather weak.
Avish
And I might not go so well.
April
I could pair you up with someone else who's much stronger than you are. But, you know, I mean, I am going to do the best that I can to try to build this foundation because it's really important to the stakeholders that they are hearing from their sponsor, they see the sponsor, they are active and visible in the change.
Avish
And so just so I'm clear and Listeners are clear. You've mentioned sponsors and stakeholders. So what's the sort of differential there?
April
Yes, the sponsor is. There's one sponsor, right? That is the person with the money, that's the budget, that's the authority, that's the throat to choke. Stakeholders. Anybody who is impacted by a change is a stakeholder. And we have different degrees of stakeholders, as you can imagine, right? Like if you are impacted directly by a change, like you have to use a new computer system, a new software, or maybe you have a new new boss to report to, you have an organizational restructuring, you are definitely a stakeholder. Right. You might even be called a stakeholder and we might call you a special name of end user. Right? Right. This is the person who is an end user, who's actually at the end of the process is using the technology or the new system or the new structure.
So that's a special type of stakeholder, an end user. But other stakeholders could be people who are, you know, not directly impacted, but are somewhat downstream impacted. Those still. They are still stakeholders. And so sometimes we'll use like a stakeholder matrix to look at, you know, who is being impacted the most, who's being impacted the least, and then who is the most vocal and who's the least vocal and kind of, you know, matrix those groups to. To help figure out who do we need to really stay in touch with in terms of communication. But all stakeholders are important.
And for example, when I did my. The Healthy Michigan Plan Plan program, one of the ways that, you know, it was.
I was kind. I was very concerned about how are we going to reach all of the stakeholders? Because all of the stakeholders included the citizens of the state. And there were, you know, eight, eight and a half, nine million stakeholders there. I thought, wow, you know, this is pretty massive. But so what we looked at was associations that were connected to the state. Right. And so we pushed our communication through the associations who would push it to their members.
Who would push it to their members. Right. And this cascading process went through the state so that everybody was aware of what was happening before it happened, which is huge. That's the next one, which is advanced communication. So. Yeah, well, that's.
Avish
Yeah, that's the a. Is advanced.
April
Yeah. So it was important to really push the communication, you know, out through all of the channels that we could think of to get to all of the different stakeholder groups because we didn't want any stakeholders to be left out and to not understand what was happening. And yet, you know, it's very tough for For a team, a small team working at the state to be able to communicate with all of the citizens. So, but the great thing about the state is they do have, you know, communication governance. They do have large communication tools. And so I worked with the governance team, I worked with our, our, you know, the, the communication director of the agency to ensure that we got the messaging out.
Avish
Got it. And so you already started talking about the A, which is the advanced communication. This is where you're getting the communication out, kind of disseminating it. There are two things I want to ask you about that I read in the book that kind of jumped out at me. One is this idea you have in there of just send an email thinking, which, you know, I think we all fall into. Like I just said Nemo, but could you explain a little bit about what that is and why maybe it's not the best form of thinking?
April
Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I found that particularly offensive and frustrating would be like on a Friday at 3 o' clock or something, somebody would like from it would send out an email and say, oh, on Monday you're computer will look completely different. We've reimagining all the commute, all the computers over the weekend. We're like, what are you talking about? You know, like there was no detail at all. It's just like, oh, here's a heads up, 3 o' clock Friday that you're gonna have a completely different computer on Monday. And it was like, well wait a minute, you know, there's things I need to save.
Like I have to make sure my files are backed up. I have stuff like on my desktop, you're gonna, you know, delete everything. So I think that this, this send an email is like, it's a, it's a form of denying the fact that people need communication in advance. It's sort of this lazy way of thinking about communicating. Oh, we'll just send an email and everybody will read our email. Well, I'll tell you, people don't read emails.
They just don't. People don't read emails. They don't read emails that matter, that are important, that say right in the, right in the subject line. This is important for your work. They, you know, ignore it. Go on.
Avish
I think that, you know, people stop reading emails. So people started use overusing the word urgent in the subject line. So now we ignore the urgent because we're like, this is, I've been getting this, I've been getting these emails from the Census bureau about a survey. They want me to take. And they have been putting in like last reminder. And I'm going in there like, wait, this is not the sense. I'm not legally required.
But they are writing it in a way where it's like, reminder, you have to do this. Like, but it's like, oh, it would help us if you did this. Like, oh, like you are over. You are making more likely to zone out of your future communication now.
April
Yes. And so it's really tricky, Avish, because sometimes, you know, you're trying to send so much communication to make sure people know something and at the point they, they get so sick of you sending them things, it's difficult. You know, you're like, oh, now I'm so sick of you. And I can't, I'm not even going to open this. If I see the word survey in any email, I delete it. Like, I delete it instantly. It's like, no, I don't want to do your survey.
And yet I'm begging people, you know, please do my survey. Right? So it's just really frustrating. Email is so overused that you cannot count on sending an email and having people read it and that they would know what's coming. So you have to make the assumption that they are not going to read the email. You're going to send it multiple times with different subject lines to try to entice them, obviously. And yet they still probably might ignore it.
And so what other options do you have, right? Like we can text, we can put po pop up Windows. You know, I've, I've seen a lot of IT departments resort to pop up Windows saying, you know, your system has been changed. You have to click on this box, you know, read this and click on the box to start working with your new system, you know, with your new image. I mean, there's just a lot of challenges when it comes to just send an email. You know, it's not going to be very effective because you have to use more than just an email.
Avish
You know, what sounds depending on the size of the organization too, what sounds incredibly inefficient. But when you talk about effectiveness versus inefficiency is just like talking, right? Like walking around from cubicle to cubicle and just be like, oh, hey, heads up. If you missed the email, you know, we're doing this update next week and boom, just like, you know, that sounds like, oh my God. But really realistically, how long would that take? Like an hour maybe? Well, if you're talking about a thousand.
April
Person organization, like I'm working with some large organizations who have. Who have, you know, multiple locations all over the place. Sure.
Avish
That's not gonna work.
April
Work, yeah, that you can't necessarily. And. And many of the leaders are not in person there. You know, like, they're. They're remote leaders. But yeah, yeah, sure.
Avish
Obviously it's a case, because I'm just thinking, Mike, I worked at Chase Manhattan. It was like a building that had, like, 14 floors. And I'm like, you know what? It would be a pain, but if it's a. And so it's not every change, but if it's like a real major change and you want people on board, like, a little extra time will probably save you a lot of headaches down the road.
April
So I do have to, like, digress and tell you this story about this. This financial system that we were implementing. I discovered, like, by accident in a meeting. I discovered that within, like, a month, they were going to change the payroll system. And nobody knew. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, you're going to. You're going to change the payroll system?
They're like, oh, yeah, it goes in next month. I'm like, but nobody knows this. They're like, well, I know, but we're going to send an email, right?
Avish
Yep.
April
I'm like, oh, my gosh. And so I went back to my one building that I worked in. Went back to the one building I worked in, the building with all the leaders of the agency. And so I actually grabbed an 11 by 14 sheet of paper out of the printer and I did a, like, you know, with a Sharpie, like, attention, payroll system will change on August 30th. And, you know, big exclamation points. And I, I posted it. We had this.
The only way to. To get. They didn't. You could take the stairs, but it was primarily elevators. I posted one of these.
I made 14 copies. I posted one on each floor above the elevator button. And I had put my email on there. Email me or call me if you have a question. And all of a sudden, leaders start calling me, like, what is this?
What did I just see? And that was a very effective way to get it in front of the leaders.
Quick, quickly, because I just posted it. So sometimes physical connection like that is very effective. Aisha. It's just great, you know, to walk around, tell people to post something in a central place that they're all going to see it. And yet, you know, at the same time, I was just, like, beside myself. Like, don't you understand? Like, this is the biggest impact change.
Avish
You don't mess with payroll.
April
You touch people's payroll, you're like touching like nerve.
Avish
And you know, in a, in a. Now when I worked a corporate job was 20 plus years ago now with so much more distributed teams and virtual, like maybe the walking around or the signs don't work as much, but there are still a lot of groups at work. And it is funny how, and there's, I think this, you see this in marketing and communication and leadership. There's almost like a, the email is just easier. It's, it's, it's like protected. So you know, if you work at a company of like 100 people, 150 people, it's in one location. Like it's not that hard to just go to each department.
April
You're right. You write that you completely, you know, talking to people, walking around and socializing. That idea is perfect. If you're all there in, in an environment, it works great. Yeah.
Avish
If you're a large, you know, 2,000, 5,000 plus company, like you said, with multiple sites and people working remotely, it's a little different, but you gotta, you know, manage the, the kind of tool for the task. So.
April
Yes, yes.
Avish
Well, we're coming close to the end then and we've only gotten through three, so I want to kind of quickly touch upon the last two. And we've been talking so much about each one. So let me get into the D, which is develop support and training. And so this is, I think, I think when we're thinking about change management, this is what a lot of people jump to. It's like we got to train our people on the new ERP system or on the tech that we're going to roll out or whatever.
April
Yes. And they need to, you know, understand how to log in. They need to understand how to use the system to do their job. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of work in that area. And that is the place, I agree with you that where everybody thinks about change management, they think about kind of that training and development piece. And it's very important, you know, and it's one of the, I feel like it's one of the pieces that is incredibly important and has to be done well. And yet sometimes it gets a little bit of a short shrift in terms of leaders thinking about it and maybe recognizing the importance of it.
And I've also learned over time, you know, that no matter how many times the vendor says, oh, we have, we have training, we have training. Right. The vendor will always tell you they have training. And it's true, they do have training, but it's not the type of training that you need. It's the type of training where the vendor is showing you how what you could use in every field, like, here's a field, here's the drop down, look at what you can pick, right? But the training we need is, here's what to pick for your business process, here's what to do for your work. This is how we want to use the system for us.
And so that's why training many times is a little bit of a quicksand sometimes for a company because they think the vendor has the training. And right as they're working through that training to look at it, they recognize like, oh no, this is not what we need to do. And then all hands on deck to try to develop that training.
Avish
Right? And that's why you either need someone to work hand in hand with the vendor, you know, you know, even a consultant or someone internal who understands how this tool needs to be used, or find like a third party group that like people who specialize in that sort of thing. Because I agree, I think a lot of the training you'll see with vendors is it's almost like a version of their sales training. It's like, oh, here's all the cool things you can do with this. Like, I don't need any of that for my job.
April
I'm not gonna do that. Right? Yeah, I can, but it's nice. I could pick Alaska, but hey, I'm in Michigan, you know.
Avish
Yeah. It is funny how like some people do training on things like that. You can tell they, you can tell the elements of the tool that they are enamored with because they will just like wax poetic about how amazing this cool is. Oh, you can arrange this this way. And I'm like, I, I don't need that at all. It's. Well, I was about to go on a tangent, but something else, but.
Well, let's talk about the last one then, which is the Y. And I love this. It's a letter Y, but it stands for the word Y, which makes total sense. And I love this one because I feel like, you know, when it comes to sort of thin slicing focus, it's like for, for me, like I said, I'm not like a change management consultant per se. I focus very much on like the mindset and the emotion around change. And I think this is where kind of this, this piece comes in, right? It's like getting people to understand why this change is happening.
Why it's important, why it's relevant. Is that correct?
April
Yes. And so the why is. It's. It's kind of multipurpose why. I find that the word why comes up a lot when I'm getting close to implementation, or I'm actually in implementation, execution of the change. And people start saying, why do we have to do this? Why do I have to do this?
Why do I need to. You know, what happens if I don't do it? Right. Like, then that resistance really kind of comes up. And so resistance is very human, very important. We are going to have resistance to a change. The hands down, always will have resistance.
Even changes that we choose that are positive, we get resistance. So resistance is common. We should know to look for it. We should think about it, like very early on, I usually am thinking about it when I'm doing my stakeholder assessments. I'm thinking about where's that resistance going to come from?
What are people fearful about? And then I'm finding the. The. That I'm trying to respond to their resistance with the why of the change. So they're asking me, why do we have to do it? And I'm responding to them with the why, which is the benefit of the change. Right? There is a benefit to this change.
We thought about that benefit. In the relevant relatable story, I was.
Avish
Going to say this kind of comes full circle.
April
And it comes full circle that, that the why then is revisited. We're going back to it. We're reminding people of why, and we're also incorporating lessons we've learned along the way into that why, because we will have learned things, you know, from that point on. And then we want to. And so I have a couple of ways that I like to break down resistance. And one of them is the book about the resistance avatars and what they're what, where, which is great.
Avish
And I took notes on that. But you know that we can talk like 20 minutes on that. So people should get the book. But it's about how they're positive aspects, but when using the wrong way, they become negative.
April
So, yes. And so I think it's just really important to know that the resistance is going to come. Recognize there's resistance to the mindset shift, which is incredibly important. Everybody has to go through a mindset shift to really adopt that change. And it goes along also with the difficulty of behavior change. We have to change our behavior. So those two pieces have to happen.
And without the mindset shift and without the behavior change, we can't get to that Change adoption. And so it's really important to make sure that we have this line from resistance. Yes, we recognize it, we know it's here. I'm going to be trying to address it through my advanced communication all the way through, but then, sure enough, it's going to show up really close to the end, and I'm going to help people move through that resistance, into that mindset, shift behavior change, and be able to adopt that change to go forward.
Avish
And it's funny because, you know, we talk about ignoring communication and things like that and the messaging. And I think that reason it comes at the end is because I think so many people just ignore the messaging until they absolutely have to deal with it. Part of it is we zone it out. Part of it is we're procrastinating. Like, I'll deal with this. And then all of a sudden, and you probably dealt this where it's like, it's a week out and all of a sudden people start raising objections and you're like, where were you three months ago when we started this process? Why did you not bring any of this up?
They're like, well, I'm bringing it up now. Like, well, yeah, but you have to be prepared for that and be prepared to address it.
April
Yes, yes, be prepared for that. Used to take up resistance somewhat personally, but now, you know, I really use a different sort of mindset about it. I mean, I've done my own mindset shift. I see resistance as a welcome recognition that something's happening. I'm like, yes, they're feeling finally aware, like that. Boom, it's finally hit them. So.
Avish
Well, I just did an article on this, I think I posted on LinkedIn, which is about kind of apathy versus resistance and how, you know, we look at resistance as something bad, but at least when people are resisting, they're engaged in the process.
April
Yes.
Avish
When they just stay quiet and don't raise anything, it's like, we think it's good. Like, oh, there's no objections, but they might just be like, so done. They're like, whatever, I don't care. Or internally being like, I'm not even going to do this thing they want me to do. But resistance, like you said, it's actually, you know, it's. They're there, they're talking to you. They care a little bit. So that.
That's a good sign.
April
Yes, yes, I completely agree.
Avish
Well, this was great. I'm going to finish up here in just a minute by asking one final question, but just kind of summarize so if you, if you want to learn more about you and the Ready set change, model your book maybe look to engage you. They're going through a change, you know, erp, reorg, something like that. They're like, oh, we could really use some help in this. How can people find you, connect you, get your book, learn more about you?
April
Yes, you can visit www.springboard-consult.com. so it's not the, not the aim- it's the springboard-consult.com I like that, I.
Avish
Like that, that way, that way you're not trying to tell people to go to aprilcallisberchmeyer.com you'd never be able to.
April
Spell it, I don't think. But yeah, there I've got my website for speaking, for consulting and also for training for our, the Certified Change Management Professional exam that's given by the Association Management Professionals. So I, I train folks to take and pass that exam. We've had great success. We've got over 140 graduates who have passed.
Avish
So yeah, if you're interested in getting that certification, check out April's website and obviously if you want the book, if you want to learn more about her speaking consulting training, go check it out hopefully from this podcast. You see it's a big process and help you with that. So April, final question. This is how I kind of like to end all my podcast episodes is I talk about this idea of saying yes and instead of yes, but which I know you're familiar with and I do that because I honestly believe the world would be a better place if everyone just started with a default mindset of yes and instead of yes, but if they just started with that open mindedness, the world would be a better place. So what is one small thing that you believe if everyone did it would just make the world a better place?
April
One small thing that I believe if everybody did, it would make the world a better place. I think if everybody heard the word change and thought aha, I wonder what's that? That is instead of thinking oh gosh.
Avish
No, that is fantastic. Seeing change as an opportunity and not like oh my God, I gotta resist it. Yes, I agree, I'm biased, but I agree the world would be a better place.
April
Change and.
Avish
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much April, this has been fantastic and thank you everyone for listening and be sure to check out April and be sure to tune in next week when we have another great podcast guest. Thanks April.
April
Thank you.