BLOC Podcast

55: Change Management and L&D with Lata Hamilton

July 26, 2022 Episode 55
BLOC Podcast
55: Change Management and L&D with Lata Hamilton
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I chat with the brilliant Lata Hamilton about change management and how it's related to the field of L&D. We talk about the differences and similarities between L&D and change management as well as why change managers like to work with folks in L&D.

Lata is a pocket rocket burst of energy with a big heart... and big hair! She is the Founder & CEO of Passion Pioneers and the creator of the “Leading Successful Change” program. Lata has worked with some of Australia’s biggest companies, and tripled her salary in the space of just 3 years to almost $200,000. She moved from Marketing to the world of Organisational Change Management and developed her own style of inspiring change leadership. She’s worked on changes that have impacted over 100,000 people, global cultural transformations, operating model changes, and digital transformation that is literally changing the way that we work. In 2015, Lata became a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner and Coach, and started her own side hustle. Lata transitioned full-time to her business in July 2021, blending her coaching and change work into her courses and consulting services. She helps women carve their own paths for change in career, leadership and life with confidence and authenticity and truly earn their worth. Lata is an absolute foodie, a cardio junkie, and an avid op/thrift shopper. Lata was adopted from India by an Australian family and believes it doesn’t matter where you started - it’s where you’re going and the lives you change along the way that counts.

Website: www.latahamilton.com
Follow Lata on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/latahamilton

Lata's suggestion for those interested in learning more about change management:


Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

Thanks for listening to the BLOC!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

Or check out what I'm working on over at https://www.getusefulstuff.com/

Lata Hamilton:

with change management, we're always looking at COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING and business readiness. And that training aspect is where we do see a lot of synergies and we create a lot of relationships and working relationships with l&d teams.

Heidi Kirby:

Hello, friends and welcome to the block the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Kirby. And on today's episode, I welcome my wonderful electric friend Lata Hamilton to talk about what I like to call LMDS cousin. Change Management. We compare the two fields and talk about what they have in common, and lattice shares why she likes to work with people in l&d. Hey, Lata, how are you? Hey,

Lata Hamilton:

Heidi, really, really good to be here? I'm very well,

Heidi Kirby:

I was good. Great. I'm so glad to have you here. And we're just gonna jump right in. And we're gonna start with tell me about you. Tell me about what you do, how you got to where you are today. And anything fun? You want to share? Thank

Lata Hamilton:

you so much. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's really great to be here, like I mentioned, and I guess a little bit about me. So I'm a change leadership expert and a confidence coach, it's been an interesting path to get here, I've had a lot of varied careers. On the road to today, I guess, is what I would say. So I have worked in advertising, I've worked in marketing, I've worked in change management. So they're kind of like my three main careers that I've worked in. And I've worked in everything from really small creative agencies with just a handful of people, small startups to you know, some of Australia's biggest companies, and working on changes that have impacted over 100,000 people operating model changes that have impacted 1000s of people, global cultural transformations, struggling continents, and digital transformation that's changing the way we work. So a big diverse background on the path to where I've been here. But I guess, alongside my corporate career, I also started my own business and became an accredited chain, coach and neuro linguistic programming practitioner. So yeah, I kind of been growing that along the side. And now I'm at a stage where I bring the two together. And that's why I've sort of made a bit of a move from, I guess, talking mostly about change management. So I am a change management, a change manager, I should say. And I've kind of don't talk about change management as much I talk about change leadership and the intersection between, you know, how we lead change in organizations, how we lead change for our teams, how we lead change for our people, but then also how we lead change for ourselves, how we grow our own confidence in our own leadership skills, and how we step into our own leadership and our own light. So I help women carve their own paths for change in any area, whether it's their career, their leadership, or their life. So yeah, it's been really an really interesting journey, coming to this stage. And I just feel so blessed to be able to bring everything all together and wrap it all together. Everything that I love to do everything that I'm really good at doing, bringing it all together to really empower empower women in their leadership and their future.

Heidi Kirby:

I love it. I love women in leadership.

Lata Hamilton:

Space, isn't it?

Heidi Kirby:

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And if you haven't figured out as a listener, how this relates to learning and development, by now by minute two, then I'll spell it out for you. But I think it's pretty clear when you talk about, you know, influencing change at your organization, leading change at your organization. Looking at it holistically in learning and development, we do the same thing, but just with learning rather than change, right? And the culture of learning and integrating different learning experiences into the organization. And it takes some change management skills to do that even right, money, training programs and things like that. But if we think about learning and development as a profession, I don't know I would call it like a cousin maybe to change management, or something like that maybe right? Especially if we think of like traditional learning and development is like, housed under HR and surveying the internal teams especially where, you know, learning is gathering all the information you need for the job you have and development is gathering all the information for the job you want to have. And so thinking in terms of that lead learning and development team, being responsible for learning programs, onboarding, sales enablement, leadership, development, all of those great things you So that's kind of the bread and butter of learning and development. Could you give me kind of like the definition of change management as a profession? And why it kind of is the cousin to learning and development?

Lata Hamilton:

Yeah, I love that the cousin, we're all family, right? And

Heidi Kirby:

it does, yeah,

Lata Hamilton:

I believe sometimes when you like, find those professions that really do partner up, and they sort of, you know, it's all from the same hymn book and like, you know, singing the same tune. And it is just really beautiful to have those connections across an organization or across across industries even. So change management, I love to to find things really simply. And you know, I have a lot of students come through my programs and my courses. And I like to just really make things as simple as possible. So I like to define change management as moving people from doing things in one way to doing things in a new way in the organization. And that could be a new process, a new system, a new team structure, a new a new site, like moving to a new site, it could be the the move to remote work, because of COVID, it could be the move back to the office. So anything that changes in an organization. And the only other thing that I would sort of say is we do that in order to realize the business benefits. So we don't just do change management to help people feel good. It's not just a fluffy practice, we actually are doing it so that we can realize the business benefits change management usually works on projects, often, not always, but probably about 95% of change. Work is done in the project space. And so we're really looking at how can we actually extract the benefits from the project? How can we make sure that it lands successfully and is adopted successfully in the organization in order to be able to realize the benefits realize how people are going to improve the way that they do things, and improve their experience as well. So with change management, we actually sort of focus in three key areas, which is I think, where like that connection with learning and development really comes in. Because with change management, we're always looking at communications, training and business readiness. And that training aspect is where we do see a lot of synergies and we create a lot of relationships and working relationships with l&d teams. And yeah, it's, it is just a match made in heaven. It just works so well together. When when we're able to harness those skills from from l&d professionals into the change space and vice versa.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, absolutely. I think of specifically a project that I worked on that was implementing a new HRIS system for our HR team. And that had really well at first, it had nothing to do with learning and development, it was really just about enablement internally, right. And so there was a ton of change management and communication that had to go into that. And that's, you know, HRIS system, that's, that's people's lives, that's people's paychecks, right, like all of their time off, all of those things are housed in such a system. And so it becomes super crucial. But yeah, I think that's great. I think it is a match made in heaven. So how can change management help a learning team with the changes?

Lata Hamilton:

Yeah, it's a really good question. I mean, a lot of the change that I've worked on has been in that digital space, and has been in sort of like, you know, technology transformations, or technology systems and implementations. And we're seeing a huge increase, I guess, like an influx of those sorts of systems within, like the world, just generally, their technologies coming out specifically for the learning and development space, for, you know, Ed, tech, all of those sorts of things that would partner for learning and development. So in terms of like, where change management could help an l&d team, if they were looking to implement, like a system like that, or looking to do, even even looking through any kind of program. But if we talk about a system, I think it's something that everybody can kind of relate to, everybody can handle. So when we when so like I mentioned, it's sort of like change management looks at the big picture of the change. We're not just looking at a particular process, we're not just looking at a particular system, we look holistically at the entire environment that that system or that that change is going to sit in, and we look end to end. So we go, you know, not just what do people need to know about this? And like how to make the things that people need to learn about how to use the system, for example, we also look at, you know, why, why are we needing to implement the system? What are the benefits of the system? What are some of the other things that people need to know? Or what are some of the other questions that they would like that they would ask about this system? And then how does this system relate to other systems that already exists in your organization, or other systems that might be on the roadmap for future implementation? So we really look holistically with a change perspective. And I know that that's sometimes because we're in that project space. If you think about Unlike a lot of l&d teams that I've worked with, so learning and development teams that I've worked with, they're actually like a business as usual team that sit in the business. And so they're, you know, usually like a permanent team that sits in the business. And they are usually at capacity, they have a lot already, they have those regular programs and rhythms that they're delivering. Plus, then they have their learning and development projects on top. Whereas a change manager usually comes in specifically to work on a project. So we have a little bit more of that bandwidth, I think, to kind of look more holistically and see the bigger picture. And then to be able to really partner with that learning team. We do look at like the whole IT environment. And we can kind of sometimes asks, ask tricky questions, because we want to understand exactly what this is going to mean for people and their experience and the integration and the implementation. We want to we want to understand all of those things. So sometimes we might ask questions around great, like, you know, like, what's, what's the whole IT environment around this? where's this going to fit into the whole it ecosystem? How are you going to support this ongoing? How are you going to make sure that it improves in the future, that it's not just like set and forget this this l&d system that it's actually going to be continuously improved? In the future? Who's going to do that? How are they going to do that? Or when are they going to do that? What does that support model look like? You know, what happens if you need to update things? And what happens if that system, you know, isn't isn't supported by the vendor anymore? Down the down the track? What are you going to do about it? So we look at not just putting the system in? How do we keep the system there and keep it useful and sustainable and being used by people. There's like a really good example that I have actually on this is like, there's one like learning tool that is like a bit of it like a sort of an ed tech kind of an app. But I won't mention that. Because I don't want to like necessarily put it under the spotlight. But like this tool gets used on the over the top of other tools. And it's like, that's great. But then, so like you can implement it. But then you've really got to have that process ongoing around how you're going to keep it up to date, how are you going to keep making sure that if your business process changes in the business, that this tool, that there's a process to make sure that this tool gets updated at the same time. So it is really looking at that whole end to end, not just now but right into the future. And then the other thing is like I'm very much like something that I do in the in the Change Leadership course that I have, which is leading successful change, I really talk a lot about sort of stakeholder management, stakeholder engagement and stakeholder influence. And so as a change manager, I'll often like come into an organization and build relationships and build connections across the business really fast. Because I want to know, who's who in the zoo, I want to know who could I who could, who needs to be engaged in order to help me deliver this change, or who's going to own this change, you know, for the business moving forward. So we, we kind of connect with the business team with the communications team with the learning and development team. And we kept we make connections all across the business. And I think sometimes like, you know, we like I will play matchmaker between gas teams and introduce them. And it might be that they know of each other, but they've never really gone and sat down together. So like instead of, say, for example, instead of the learning and development team trying to come up with all the communications for the new system that they want to implement. It could be that, you know, a sort of introduce them and actually sit down and have a session with them with the comms team and the comms team are experts in how to communicate that system. And so then suddenly, you're not being expected to do everything for your project end to end. So really kind of like to connect those teams together. But then also, what we also do in change is we do talk a lot about culture, we talk about our ways of working, we talk about what needs to change around the system, or around the processes to make actually work effectively. What are the some of the soft skills or the leadership skills or the extra capabilities that might be required. And so we can help to embed a learning culture for a learning and development team who might come up with the learning culture, and then change can help to actually bring it to the organization. And then something that I think has been really powerful when I've partnered with learning teams in the past. It's like when there's like, for example, like a new operating model, and there are those new you mentioned, like development, those new skill sets those new responsibilities in a role. It's a lot of work. Is it a tidy?

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah, yes, it's a lot of work.

Lata Hamilton:

And so, again, like if there is a new model, or restructure of a team and new roles and responsibilities, again, a change manager can kind of come in and help understand everything holistically, end to end and and how to really bring people on board with what that new model or restructure or new team structure since they would look like. So yeah, there's a lot that we can do to come in and help and change management is still a pretty new industry and profession. It's not, it's not sort of, not everybody knows what changes or knows how to use change. But when, when change and learning come together, I just think it's magic, like the magic just starts to happen. Because you sort of you have the same objective around really supporting people's experience and supporting people's development and how they can be the best version of themselves in an organization and in their career and in their life. So, yeah, I think that there's just so much value connecting each other. Yeah, and

Heidi Kirby:

I love what you say about, you know, being able to just add that extra layer of almost like the not just the root cause analysis, but like, working to keep things cross functional. I think that that's where a lot of times learning and development is lacking a little bit, right. Like you said, we're always at bandwidth, right? We're always trying to prove our worth and prove our value. But I think part of the problem is that we're so reactive, right? Like, I feel like every learning and development team that I've worked on is reacting to the business rather than being proactive. And I think working with change managers can help us to be able to be more proactive and give us some of that extra bandwidth, like you're talking about looking at things holistically, especially with the software that goes over top of other software that will not be named, there could be any of a few of them, right? Like there's a few quite popular.

Lata Hamilton:

Just, it's yeah, like right now, it was what I would say, we just got this plethora of apps out there.

Heidi Kirby:

Yeah. But like that, specifically, is something that should be shared between learning and development, marketing, like depending on you know, the structure of your business and what your products are, there are cross functional efforts happening, that if you're not aware of what the other teams in your organization are doing, you're going to be duplicating efforts you're going to be, you know, people in learning and development always want the seat at the table, and why aren't we you know, involved in all these things. And, and I think sometimes we do it to ourselves, because we don't have those conversations with others. And we don't find out what everyone else is working on and where we can collaborate, rather than kind of be in those silos. So I think that we have a lot to learn from Change management is a good

Lata Hamilton:

cost benefit there too, sometimes, right? Like if you know that, say three areas of the business learning, marketing and sales, for example, if they're all looking for similar type of solution, like a similar type of system or app, it's like you can band together and go, Hey, you know, triple the number of licenses or triple the triple implementation and pull the budget together and actually have more negotiating power, for example, with the vendors or implement that rather than having three separate project teams working on the same delivery, like pulling resources together. And you know, like, many hands make light work, right. So,

Heidi Kirby:

yeah, or worst case scenario, you have those three teams buying three separate pieces of software, say

Lata Hamilton:

that you say that, Heidi, but I've seen it, I've seen it before. Because of that connections that are you know, like I make, and I encourage my students in leading successful change, I encourage them to just go in and just network widely across the business because exactly that scenario happens. It is reality. And there's just there's easier ways of there's easier ways of doing business. Let's just say it's easier ways to get to get the results that you need. Yeah,

Heidi Kirby:

yeah. So what did change managers love about l&d professionals

Lata Hamilton:

to it, you know, like, I actually love working with the business teams like the business's usual teams that are sort of connected to change. And it's like, you know, it's the same with the comms team. So if there's an internal communications team or a communications team in the business, like I love going and working with them, if there's an l&d team or a training team in the business, I love going and working with them and, and getting their support with a change. Often I don't have in the organization like I don't have necessarily the the knowledge, the background and like sort of that subject matter expertise of how the business functions and how the business works and what the history has been, you know, what's been delivered before so there's been changes when the second or third stab at a change and the l&d team has gotten has had that experience of like how that how we've tried to implement it in the past. So getting that feedback and those reflections and those experiences is just absolute gold. But yeah, like there's just a lot of relief, I think when a learning and development person or a training person is allocated to a change, because it's just this whole, you know, change is such a big broad area, we cover comms training and business readiness, we're not necessarily experts in any one of those things. Like, I have knowledge and expertise in each of them. And I teach my students that too, but it's almost like we were more high level and at the overview, and it's really great to partner with people who have the expertise, have the skills, you know, have the knowledge about how people learn how people absorb information, and how people absorb capability and how people embed it and integrate capability to be able to actually partner us on a change and take on, you know, that real that that focus and actually be able to give the recipients of the change or the impacted teams are leaders of the change, give them their attention and give them their focus and their skills and expertise to help the training and capability part of the change. If there isn't an l&d person, I'll jump in to do it. But yeah, like, oh, or I have to coach somebody else in the team. Oh, sure. You know, I sort of do the change planning, and then somebody else will come in to help. So I've got to try and coach somebody from the ground up. And it's just so much easier to have somebody who's already got those skill sets. And they they're really passionate about improving the experience of people about developing people skills about developing people's, you know, confidence about developing people's knowledge and their use of different systems and applications in a business. So yeah, I just love it. Whenever we get the opportunity to partner with the l&d team or a training team. I'm like, thank you. I love it.

Heidi Kirby:

That's great. I've never had the pleasure of having a change manager work on my team. But I think I would love that. I think there's also probably some folks that I've worked with in the past who would feel a little little bit territorial about having a change manager come in, and I'm sure that you have some stories about that kind of thing. And but what would be like your number one recommendation for change managers working together with l&d teams, so maybe you have an l&d team that has a couple of those people on it. They're like, Who's this person? And what are they doing here? And how would you kind of like, break the ice and recommend that you work together? Instead of kind of being territorial?

Lata Hamilton:

Yeah, it does happen. And honestly, as a, as a change professional, I'll come into an organization or into a project. And I know, I'm going to leave. I know I'm going to leave. So any thoughts that everybody has about like, you know, are they coming in to take our job? Or are they trying to take over this bit and stuff like that, it's really not the case at all. We're, we're change management, we're just looking to deliver and get the best outcome possible. So sometimes it is about sort of going, you know, this is my space. This is what I can do for you. If you're an l&d professional, so going, like having real clear delineation, like, Hey, here's, here's my skill set, here's my capacity, here's what I can do for you. And here's what I own and cover. Because oftentimes, a change manager will be like, Thank you, like, Thank you for making that clear. And thank you for showing how I can how I can best work with you. Thank you for showing how like what the process is to engage your, your team or your your, your capacity. And also, we're usually like, this is fantastic. Like, we actually, we actually would rather that the business teams like l&d and like communications, that they actually have a real hand in the change, and that they come on board and actually partner with us because they're gonna be there after we leave. Like the whole point of a tomb raider is to really help with transition. We don't, we don't stay around. Like after the project, usually, because most changes delivered on a project, we don't stay around. So it is about kind of probably just being really clear what your role is and how you'd like us to work with you. And the same goes for any change professionals who are out there, like, be aware that there are business teams that might sometimes feel like you're coming in, sort of treading on their toes. So go in with respect. Go in with gratitude. Go ahead with appreciation and and ask the question, you know, how can I best help you? How can we best work together on this change and be open to being flexible? That's actually how I teach change leadership. is is to teach fit for purpose, practical change leadership through my leading successful change program. And it's like, how do you take all the things that you know how to do, but then in that organization, for that team for that perfect, like fourth in that, that project and that specific project? How do you make it work best for them and what's right in that moment, and it might be different, you might work with an l&d team on one project, and they play and they support you in one way, or you engage and connect with each other in one way. And then for the next project that comes down the line, they might be like, not, I'm at capacity, I'm not gonna be able to help you with this, you'll have to do X, Y Zed, and it could chop and change even between projects in an organization. So I think it is that mutual respect, and that mutual appreciation and gratitude. And, yeah, and I also really do encourage like machines, for example, I encourage them to go and learn some of those extra skill sets, so that they know what they're they so that they can go and learn and actually understand even if it's just like a Fundamentals course, or a webinar or something like that, to understand what like l&d professionals do, or what comms professionals do, so that they have that appreciation, or here's what they need from me, or here's what their objectives are, here's what the outcomes that they're trying to achieve in the business.

Heidi Kirby:

I love that. And I love that you talk about, you know, kind of the, there's got to be a tough shell there right to be a change manager, because you're going to deal with the people who are change averse, right? Like, that's just that's part of the gig, right? In the same sense, again, that's another parallel to learning and development, because we're going to deal with the people who don't want to do the training, or who have no motivation to learn the thing, right? And that's our challenge to is how do we get that person who's like, I don't even want to learn this new system. I don't even want a new system to begin with. I've been here 12 years, and we haven't had one in 10. And you know, and it's it's very much the same kind of struggle that we faced where people just get set in their ways. And you have to just kind of come to them with the what's in it for you. So that they're more open to it.

Lata Hamilton:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Totally agree with you, Heidi.

Heidi Kirby:

Nice. So one of the things one of my my big listener pools for the podcast is teachers or educators who are looking to get out of the classroom. And one of the questions that I get a lot that I'm just gonna kind of make a comment on and then lead into the last question here is, like, what if I don't want to design learning, but I like all of the other aspects of instructional design, like needs analysis, and, you know, creating a strategy and problems, and things that sound a lot like, being a change manager. So I think that this could also be a great opportunity for some of the listeners who are not like, who are not jazzed about making elearning, who are not feeling their graphic design skills, who are, you know, feeling some type of way and would rather do this kind of organizational work to really look into it. So that leads me to my last question that I asked all my guests and that's, if you could recommend just one resource to our listeners around change management, what would it be and why

Lata Hamilton:

it would probably be I've got a, I've got a free, underpaid and overlooked coaching action guide on my website, so lotta hamilton.com, if you go across to there, you can actually see that underpaid and overlooked coaching action guide. And it's a free download. And it's just a little guide that just got a simple five step process for building career confidence. And I think that that's where it all starts from, it's like, a lot of people want to dive straight in. And they want to learn all the technical stuff around change and change leadership. And it's like, until unless you have the confidence to go and feel like you have a seat at the table feel like you have a voice feel like you can step into a theme and oriental project and lead that change. Or to even you know, as you mentioned, if you're wanting to explore and change your career or earn, you know, earn more or get a promotion or something like that. It all starts from confidence. And I don't I always say it's usually like the last tip that I give to people is like focus on your confidence first because everything else flows from that and people like kind of roll their eyes and they're like, No, I just want to learn, you know, the technical side of change and I'm like, start with the confidence build yourself up so that you actually have the fuel in the tank to go in, you know, change careers or to explore more around change. And, you know, we'd love like love have you on leading successful change my program if you if leading if learning more about change is something that you want to do. But I would just say for everybody, anybody who's listening, it's like build that confidence, learn how to have confidence in yourself confidence in your worth confidence in the value that you bring to whatever role you're in to whatever team hearing whatever project you're working on, or organization or industry you're in, because everything else flows from there. And the world is your oyster. And like so many paths will open up when you just build that self worth internally and that confidence internally. So yeah, definitely check it out loud hamilton.com and grab that, grab that free guide.

Heidi Kirby:

Awesome. Yes, we'll definitely share that in the show notes. But thank you so much, again for joining me. This has been awesome, and I hope it inspires 10s of people to go find out more.

Lata Hamilton:

Thanks so much for having me, Heidi. Thanks again

Heidi Kirby:

for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.