When Progress Feels Like Failure

Mitch: Everybody, welcome back to Make Others Successful, podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies about how to build a better workplace. We're in a weird zone right now. I stayed up all night finishing our course, and so I'm I'm hanging on by a thread, but we're doing a podcast today. We're gonna be talking about lots of good things. Let's start with intros, and we'll have Libby kick us off.

Mike: Hey, everybody. I'm Mike. I run our apps and automation side of the house here

Mitch: at Bulb. Cool. My name is Mitch. I lead a lot of our strategy in marketing and business development.

Matt: Matt and I lead the communication collaborations group.

Livvy: Great. And I'm Livvy and I am marketing all the way here at Bulb. So, today we're going be talking about something related to our three sixty five Foundations course in the realm of that, which if you're listening now, it's been out for about a month, which is exciting. So some of you listening might have already started it, finished it.

Mitch: But at the time of recording, it was this morning.

Livvy: We lost it.

Mitch: We got it out there.

Livvy: Can you tell?

Mitch: Yeah.

Livvy: And this brought up an interesting kind of thought process for whether you're taking three sixty five foundations, whether you're trying to just implement better communication strategies within your workplace. How do you know if the changes you're trying to make or starting to make are working or they're not going so well? Are there big red flags or are they just growing pains? So the theme I kind of wanna go into this conversation with is friction is always gonna be a part of the process, but some friction signals deeper problems.

Matt: Mhmm.

Livvy: So we're gonna go into some of the subtopics like tool awareness, communication strategies, and dig in to see, are there signs of improvement, or are there big blocks that need a bigger addressing?

Mitch: Yeah. I feel like a lot of these efforts, we refer to the whole like a rising tide lifts all boats thing where you start to feel the impact, but we're really after measuring this, like, almost immeasurable thing that it's hard to nail down sometimes. So we want to talk about some of the tactics, some of the things that we can measure.

Livvy: Right. Yeah. And I think something that is universal is it always feels worse before it feels better, like in the midst of change, telling people to do things differently, you kind of feel like you're hounding people. It doesn't feel natural for yourself. So keep that in mind that all of the areas are gonna feel that way, I think.

Could be an opinion. But, I do want to move into tool awareness, and kind of start with when you're starting to fumble with your tools early on, starting to use things maybe a bit differently. And it's not because you don't want your tools to work better, but it's just totally unfamiliar. How can people start to see that change happening or working, even if on the surface it does not look like it's working at all when you start using your tools better.

Matt: Yeah. It's it's a challenging thing because so you may be have used Teams before, you may have used another tool before, but maybe you're using it a little bit differently. If it's something that is going to be incorporated into your everyday, into how you think about work, not just, oh, when I we switch from this ERP to that ERP, but if you're changing how you work, how you think about these things, it's going to be rough to start with. There's no question. It could be and everybody's going to experience it a little differently.

So someone who maybe has been pushing on this for a long time, they could feel great. It's like people are finally doing what I've, you know, I've been saying they want to I want them to do forever. And other people could be like, this is so frustrating. I keep forgetting to do this or do that. It's just not working for me.

And that whole process, of all, it's okay. And the is, and this will be a theme across, which is to, you need to probably step a bit back and look a little bit better across the organization, across what's going on, and focus back when you started this, what were your goals? What were you trying to get out of it? But remember, when you start using tools, it's okay if people are uncomfortable. If people are if you're the person that everybody's talking to coming in and asking questions of, you're gonna see a lot of people come in and ask you questions.

You shouldn't view that as a problem. That means they're engaged, they're moving forward. That's not necessarily a sign of a problem. But there are some signs of when they it is a problem. Does anybody want to talk about that?

Mitch: Well, quick before we I don't want to talk about problems. I'll leave that to someone else. But I like the title of this section being tool awareness. That is not tool fluency or like full understanding of them. It is what signs do you see that someone is at least aware that the tool exists.

And so that's like baby step number one to get them to do something differently. Right? So if someone is not using the tool correctly, but they're using the tool, how do we count? We need to, like, count that as a a little win. Right?

That we just need to then redirect and get them back on track and not count it as a a total loss.

Livvy: So even if someone was using, say, the tool incorrectly, but they had the right intent of trying to use it Yeah. That would be a win.

Matt: Yeah. The intent is oftentimes way more important than the what they actually accomplish with the tool. Because through use, through repetition, they'll get better at it. Yeah. But the hardest part is getting people to think of how they should be using these things.

Livvy: Yeah. Bringing it into their awareness. Just something new. So we marked that as like, okay, maybe that's not change we can physically see or even feel right away. But if there was, say, in the tool awareness world where you're like, that's a bit more of a red flag versus, this is just kind of a growing pain, what might that be?

Mitch: Yeah. You don't want to see people going back to the old systems. That's a big one, where they're trying something new, and then they get either like frustrated or lost and not want to pause and ask for direction or clarity on how to use it and they start to slide back into the old tool, that can be a recipe for frustration because it's yeah. It's it's tricky. Once once you have someone in the new world, it becomes ever more important to keep them out of that old world, to only let them use the old tool if absolutely necessary or if they're trying to, like, get old information or, like, some something tactical.

We don't want to see them revert to a previous mode, a previous strategy for that that that they would use the old tool for. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Livvy: Yeah. So that would when it's just kind of almost just total rejection of like, I I'm not.

Matt: Or they tried it and they got so frustrated that they went back to their old ways. Right? That would be a sign of why. Like, are is there something wrong with training? Is there something wrong with the concept?

Did we, like, did we not explain it? Like, I would start to ask why that is so that we can start diagnosing and moving that forward. In many cases it's just, it was a one time thing. They had an urgent issue and it went back. So a lot of times it's benign, so I wouldn't immediately go, oh, somebody started using the old system, it's like doom and gloom, everything failed.

Livvy: Right.

Matt: But if you have that happening over and over across multiple teams, across, you know, the whole organization where there's a lot of pushback, you really want to figure out what's the underlying cause. And you'd be surprised at what the real underlying cause really is. It could be something that you just didn't think of. Right? People maybe have older hardware and the software isn't working as well on this older hardware.

You probably should upgrade the hardware. Right? Make it easier for them. And maybe that wasn't something that was planned on when you originally thought about this. But, you know, that could be one example of don't just focus on the one little narrow scope of what you see.

Broaden your horizons and say, why is this a problem? Why why did this happen?

Livvy: Right. And I think that kind of moves into a sign of progress, or one that I think is if you, say, are using a new tool and you so badly wanna go back to your old tool because you know you know that you're gonna use it correctly, or you're using the new tool maybe incorrectly or you're getting stuck, I would take that as a sign of progress to be like, okay, well, least you're engaging in the new tool. Are there any other signs of progress that you might see that might be like, oh shoot, that might make someone uncomfortable.

Mitch: You know what that reminds me of is sometimes we get, like, hate comments on YouTube Yeah. Where it's like, yeah, people have random comments about things that don't really matter. And the perspective I like to take on that is, I'm glad you care so much about this topic that you're taking time out of your day and sharing that.

Livvy: And engaging.

Mitch: Yeah. I like the engagement, Granted, I wish it was positive engagement, but that is a sign that whatever we're doing is at least getting their mind turning and causing them to think. And that's a good good thing.

Livvy: Absolutely.

Mitch: I think that sort of alludes to the other thing that I see as progress a lot, which is I talk about a lot in the course and I like sit on the moment because I say, all we want you to do before you're doing your work in the midst of trying to make a change or use a different tool is pause for one extra second and rethink, is this the way that we're supposed to be doing it with this effort or moving to this tool? And just give yourself that extra because habits are formed over years and years of just repetition, and we need to jut into that. We need to to stop that habit and we need to say, give it one extra thought and and get into this other mode of thinking. And so, purely the question of should I be using this tool for this that is like a self reflection can be a good sign of progress in my mind.

Livvy: Yeah. I agree. So, that was tool awareness. I kind of want to move into the communication aspect, which I want to put an asterisk by this one. I think this is one of the easiest things to change because we have Teams, we have Slack, there's a lot of different ways that you have your own agency about how you communicate, but I do think this is the one that can get really, really messy because everyone is so individual with how they communicate.

So I think when you're changing communication systems, there's going be a lot of noise when that happens and a lot of mess. Doesn't mean it's a bad thing, though. So I'm going to state some things that I think are signs of natural growing pains within communication. You're over tagging people, you're making sure they're seeing your messages, which is a great thing because you want people to be aware. There's different channels, there's chat sprawl, you know, when you're trying to Matt and I just we made a short on this today.

Matt: Yep.

Livvy: When you start thinking about talking to a topic versus talking to a person, getting that thing switched over, which is I think a huge mindset shift, and then you don't really have the excuse anymore of like, oh, I didn't see that because you have a communication system that's working. So, I think that's something to just kind of set the bar, like, communication, these are some natural things and pain points that you might start to feel. Are there any other signs that people might be like, oh, this is working, but it feels really messy? Feels really overwhelming.

Matt: So if I am a person in it doing it, it's really about seeing the engagement in where I'm having the conversation, so in the topic, in the place.

Mitch: Mhmm.

Matt: If I'm, you somebody who's responsible for rolling around out to the organization, what I'm looking for is people correcting other people. Right? Yeah. Having that having that conversation about where the things are happening. When I see that, I know people are bought in and people understand, even if it's not 100% right.

You know, we talk about watching metrics, quantity of messages, quantity of emails that are internal, all of these things. But we're never, you know, you roll it out one month down, you're not going to see it change that much. But what you do want to see is people going, hey, this is where you should be looking doing that. Right? We're starting a conversation in that spot.

And you want to see that because that is a sign that you have buy in from people. People see the value. People see what's going on. Even if it's not perfect. Even if some people are still doing it the wrong way.

That is a great sign of progress.

Livvy: Yeah. I do want to put kind of a asterisk right here. If you've never listened to anything by us, this is the time you're ever hearing us talk. When we talk about communication, we're really against direct messaging people. We like to talk about topic based communication, talking within a channel, specific topics.

Matt: So this

Livvy: is what this is referencing Mhmm. And how we see improvement. I think that's important because communication could just be like you and I talking.

Matt: Yep.

Livvy: Yeah. I think that's a really good point to be like, okay, are people trying? Are they using where I'm talking? Are they self correcting? Those are growing pains.

Those are just natural things that, again, you might not look on the surface and be like, we are improving, we're doing amazing, but we promise those are the steps that will get you to feeling that way. What about red flags? Where you'd be like, oh, we are moving backwards if anything.

Mike: So a lot of people find themselves in this world and they are because of where they came from, they are very reluctant to post things out in the open.

Livvy: It's vulnerable. Right. Or it feels vulnerable Right. Even in a workplace.

Mike: Right. And so that points to potentially another cultural issue where people maybe get derided for things that they say Well. Or have in the past and so then

Matt: If you see that happen in the new in the new approach, that's a problem. Right? Like if you see somebody genuinely trying to use this new approach and then get jumped on by somebody for doing it not right

Mike: or not Right.

Matt: I'm saying That's not okay.

Mike: What I'm saying is like, people don't even take that step and so it the derision or whatever it is doesn't happen because they're too scared to get started, right? And so there's a leap there. And I'm speaking about a very specific example that I know about directly, where like we can't get this person to engage because of the past that they've experienced.

Mitch: So silence is maybe a Yeah.

Mike: A good

Matt: thing to watch out Somebody should send 20 emails, now it doesn't do anything. It doesn't send anything There's no talk. You know, a day. Right. You know.

Mike: That's, that's, that's, that's,

Matt: That's not, that's not okay. That's not what the intent of it is.

Mitch: Yeah. Let's have a conversation and then say, you go post that in the channel every single time. Let's figure out the safe way to say what we're saying. Just have the conversation.

Matt: I mean, it's okay to do that a couple times. Yeah. Like, when you're trying to get comfortable, that's okay. But if you see a team or a group or a person that is shutting down, not doing this, or just as continue, is using a different method that kind of still looks good in the metrics but is still, you know, is not is not doing the right thing. It can be it can be hugely detrimental because that can be frustrating for everyone else.

And it's frustrating for the person because they feel very, very vulnerable in that moment.

Livvy: Right. Nowadays too, when we're all like using either Teams or Slack, like when you're like triple checking how your sentence sounds, that is that adds a whole layer, even though you could just mean it in a very neutral tone.

Mitch: You better spell check though. Don't don't misspell something, please. Yeah.

Livvy: Or use the right emoji. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a solid red flag to be like and I think leadership, that's, you know, whoever is leading your team or, you know, your company or whoever's starting this initiative, that is like the time for them to step in really start putting that forward and starting to communicate in open channels. I do want to go through a couple signs of progress that I have noted, and I would love to know if either you have any more to add or more on the few that I have.

So I would say in the communication realm, some signs of progress that are maybe a little quiet are people start self correcting. So whether that's yourself or you cross out your message and be like, oh, sorry, I'm gonna move this to the marketing channel, or if someone's having a conversation with you via DM, you say, hey, this is great. Let's put this in our sales channel. That is a great step.

Mitch: Yeah. I feel like normally that's that's one thing we teach people is gentle redirection. People are gonna mess They're gonna put it in the wrong place and you gotta steer them in the right direction. That is a good thing. I think the thing that you're noting here, is important, is self correction is even more important.

So again, taking that extra moment to say, oh shoot, I sent that as a DM, that should go in this channel, I'm going to move it without any interference is like, go you. Like that

Matt: is That's huge. Or somebody that has made the mistake in the past and now is correcting someone else, right? That shows growth of awareness about that not only is this something that I shouldn't do, but I see the value in it. I want to bring other people along with me.

Livvy: Absolutely. Yep. Another shift of progress, I would say, is channel purposes becomes more obvious over time, and I can speak from personal experience, I had never used topic based communication until I came here. And on my day when I saw all these Slack channels just pile up, I was like, I don't know where I'm talking. I don't know the difference between general and random.

And I feel like the context helps anyone learn quickly, but if you haven't had that context, it's it's okay. But as time goes on, you're like, oh yeah, you know exactly where you're going to put something.

Matt: Mhmm. Yep. And being able to have people feel confidence in those areas is a 100% you'll recognize it, it'll become obvious that they're more comfortable in it, and that is 100%. Because that means they're starting to think about it that way Right. Rather than thinking about who do I need to talk to.

Livvy: Yeah. Topic, not person.

Mike: Mhmm.

Livvy: And then the last thing, and this is one that I think a lot of people relate to, is your notifications are being adjusted individually to what you know you need to work on and what you need to focus on. You do not need to be on for every single thing. And if you do, there's a bigger problem, I would say.

Mitch: Yeah. Do let's take a survey. How how customized do we make notifications per channel between us?

Matt: So I'm probably the outlier in that I pretty much read everything all the time. Uh-huh. But I recognize that that's unusual for

Mitch: most He actually wires his brain up to the computer

Matt: Yeah.

Mike: When he sits at

Mitch: his Yeah.

Matt: I don't I don't rely too much on notifications as much as I just something's unread, I quick jump in, review it quick, and move on.

Livvy: You're really good about that.

Mitch: Okay. I would say I generally I'm not quick to I'm quick to say I don't want to hear that and mute stuff. Like, that's that's

Matt: Yep.

Mitch: And that's a minority, though. There's like a couple projects that I'm I want to have access to and like be able to poke around sometimes if I want, but generally don't wanna hear about it. So totally mute that channel. Don't I don't get notified about it. So that's that's helpful.

That's probably the extent of notifications that I do. Otherwise, I'm like, yeah, late at night I still have notifications. But I play a different role. We play a different role in the business and don't expect that of everybody. But, yeah, what about you?

Mike: I don't bother to customize notifications

Mitch: at all. You just read

Livvy: them You're always reachable?

Mike: I don't read I don't read them all. I have a ton of unread stuff. I've learned to live with no inbox zero. Interesting.

Livvy: Oh, yeah.

Mike: Like it just is what it is. Interesting. I have the things that are important to me and I can count them on less than two hands. Do you have them That's good enough. In their own section?

I organize things by like, do have some favorites.

Mitch: Yeah. Okay.

Mike: But then I organize things by, like, client work versus Yep. Okay.

Livvy: Nice. So we talked about tool awareness, communication, now I wanna move on to knowledge management, which we do talk a lot about. Mitch has a great blog on it, we didn't do too long ago. And knowledge management is how teams store and share knowledge within a business. So, for example, we have an employee intranet where a ton of our stuff lives or any employee to look at at any time.

It's all, you know, public to all of us. It doesn't live on one of our computers, that type of thing. This is a a daunting process. I think when I think of, like, changing things in your organization, files. Mhmm.

That feels really heavy. So this is the one where it's almost so daunting where you're like, I don't think we'll feel changed till we either get, like, all the way through or halfway through or, like, a significant amount of the way through this kind of beast. But some initial friction, files are gonna go to personal OneDrives or computers. I think that is habitual, like to save something to your desktop, and maybe important links aren't surfaced in channels. Those are the two I think of when you're knowledge sharing.

What do you think about that?

Matt: Definitely trying to get things out of your desktop, your OneDrive, etcetera, into those things is like one of the biggest things you'll you'll hopefully notice. You know, when you think about signals that this is going well, I wouldn't look at it as we have every you know, a lot of people, lot of organizations come to us and they're like, I need my folder structure in the new world and it needs to be exactly the way it was and organized just perfectly, etcetera. And, you know, a lot of that is part of the problem, you know, because you're so focused on all of the small, you know, everything being done completely and holistically, it creates a world where you don't feel success, like what you were saying, until everything's done. Right. And the reality is these things are wins.

When you have a meeting and you're prepping for that meeting with your presentation or your notes or whatever that is, and you don't have 17 emails with duplicate copies of the same presentation with somebody else's updates.

Livvy: Single source of data.

Matt: That's a win. Like, that is a win. And you should take it

Mitch: as It's so hard to relate

Matt: to. No. To doing that? Yeah. A 100 Because we have

Mitch: Is that normal for you all? Like, I'm like, oh gosh. No. I I I grant.

Matt: And it is. It it is. Except for today, it's not the, some people might say, oh, that's not that's not normal for me because we use a chat. Right? Well, in the chat, you're making it in your OneDrive, you have the same problem.

You just don't realize it. It's not as bad as what it

Mitch: used to be with Because

Matt: now I have a copy of the presentation that I sent someone else and I have a copy of it that's in my my chat with some, you know, very similar problems across the board. And the more you see every one of those that happens is the win. Like Right. Every time that happens, it's a win. And you should look at it that way because it's very difficult to get it all solved.

You're just not gonna see it. And it's and and to be clear, for some people it may be more frustrating. Like, this is an area that can easily be a unseen or or misunderstood signal of progress. One person who maybe has to deal with this stuff where they used to have it on their OneDrive and I could manage it really easily and I protected it all and that made me feel really safe because I protected it all in my little world. Right?

Now can be completely frustrated by people are changing, people are doing stuff, but they also don't hear the other side of it that we did twice as many sales because I was able to be more effective at this.

Livvy: Yeah, I'd have to ask you

Matt: for Then maybe it's worth it that I'm uncomfortable. Right? But they never hear that. Right? Because on the other side of it, they're just doing their job, they're just doing more things.

And so it's really important to really ask that question, talk to people, really understand the full impact of this type of change in particular, because it will 100% not be obvious to people. It will be a feeling. It will be something people realize when you ask them at the end of the month about how things went compared to previous. When you force people to have that retrospective, you're likely to find, oh yeah, it was way better. Like, wow, yeah, I didn't think about that, but this this is working, this is better.

But it may take some effort to ask that question and to figure that out.

Livvy: Yeah. And I think knowledge management is one of those areas where you feel the improvements of other areas like tool awareness communication because this we share knowledge every day. Mean, that is so much of your workday.

Matt: Mhmm.

Livvy: And so you're kind of forced to communicate differently, you're forced to use tools differently. It's kind of the one that I think pushes you off in the most aggressive way.

Mike: Mhmm. I think there's a a hidden connection between knowledge management and communication

Livvy: Mhmm.

Mike: That gives you two benefits. And one of the benefits or one of the one of the connect the connection is, if done right or if done well, your knowledge management strategy is going to follow the pattern that you set for your communication strategy. So, those topics that we talked about, right? Those things are just going to fit and it's going to be natural and your documents are going be stored where you talk about them, right? And then, one of the other big values of that connection is, at the end of the day, if you're doing your communication right, that becomes half of your knowledge base

Mitch: for

Livvy: your organization.

Mike: So all of that work that you're doing, if you're doing it right or if you're doing it better every day, you're developing that knowledge base further and further.

Livvy: Absolutely. It all builds on each It is continuously growing. I do want to talk about a red flag where I would say if we were in knowledge management or if you're starting to change your knowledge management process, if knowledge is being duplicated or lost and no one is even subscribing to the one source of truth. Because like I said, it people think like, okay, I'm not going to feel it until we fix all of our information, all of our files. But say you're implementing this and you make a PowerPoint presentation, you're like, okay, I think I'm gonna I'm gonna try this, and someone saves it to their personal computer, you had no idea they made their own version, that would I would take as a red flag.

Matt: The big one that I would call out is it's so it's so common when people don't have a strategy or talk about it or communicate about it. Yeah. Four people create a team for the same thing. Because they all are trying to do what everybody told them to do. You're supposed to use Teams and topic based communication to manage things, but they all made their own personal kingdom where they create their topic because, a, number one, because they can.

Because they they you don't have proper controls to say no, not everybody can do it.

Mitch: They're not allowed to email or chat about it because we say they're not allowed to do Now

Matt: I'm gonna create my own little personal thing that I can invite my five people, like, like, when you see that splintering start to happen, because people have been told the concept and they understand the concept, but they don't understand or there isn't enough communication about this is the approach that we're gonna take to do that's a huge red flag that your implementation is wrong, or your strategy for it is wrong, or people are purposefully trying to work around the system rather than accepting the change.

Mitch: Yeah. Banapples is very pertinent here. Like, they can they can make a big impact negatively on the If nine people are playing well and one person is a stick in the mud, they can really hurt the progress here.

Livvy: It stinks.

Mitch: And, yeah, that's you got to get all that buy in and help people through the pain. I think it's particularly true in in this world of communication and and knowledge management.

Livvy: Absolutely. Are there any other red flags that you'd say would be like a throw a hand up, we need to rework this?

Mike: Sitting in a meeting and not everyone knows is on the on the uptake about what we're talking about

Livvy: There you go.

Mike: Because they didn't have access to a document or weren't interested. Right. Files attached to meeting invites.

Livvy: So simple, yet so effective. Right.

Mitch: Yeah.

Livvy: Yeah. I do want to keep it moving along and talk about some signs of progress that are, again, quiet, but they do show that you're moving in the right direction. I think the biggest one, and the one I struggled with when I started, and I still sometimes struggle with, is there's less of the, you know, can you send me that document again chatter, or can you send me that PowerPoint? Everyone knows it's just even if they might not know exactly where, they know it's shared at a SharePoint.

Mitch: Mhmm. That reminds me, did you ever upload our new headshots to SharePoint?

Livvy: No, I didn't.

Mitch: Livy. I

Livvy: don't even follow our principles.

Mitch: I've been watching and waiting to see

Matt: how

much

I'm

Mitch: Do you

Matt: need to upload a profile picture somewhere?

Mitch: I'm waiting for this podcast.

Livvy: I'm gonna be really honest

Mike: with you.

Matt: Bad thing to do right now, by the way, just so you know.

Mitch: We elevate. We're

Livvy: Yeah. I'm gonna really out myself there on a folder on my desktop that say, bulb twenty twenty five headshots. Ugh.

Mitch: So That's it. I'm out of here. So

Livvy: we're not all perfect.

Mitch: So Libby, we have a meeting at 4PM this Friday. No.

Livvy: Yeah. They're That threw me off. That was I

Mitch: threw a soft track.

Livvy: That's okay.

Matt: No, you, like, but that's a good That's a good sign that you know. Like, Mitch can say, hey, where are those at? And he doesn't have to say anything else because you know where they're supposed to be. Like, that's a good thing.

Livvy: And that's out of pure laziness.

Matt: So Which happens. It's just the way it is. That's okay.

Mitch: That's real thing. Fail forward, y'all. Fail forward.

Livvy: I'll give it to you so you can update your Instagram profile picture.

Mitch: Thank you. You. Follow me on LinkedIn.

Livvy: Yeah. Follow me on LinkedIn. Another thing that I would note as a really solid sign of progress is teams link back to shared documents instead of uploading new copies or, like, the whole v one, v two. I hate I can't

Mitch: even imagine doing Let's cross out teams and say leaders link back to, oh my goodness. That is

Livvy: That would be huge.

Mitch: Yeah. Can you imagine your boss actually using this strategy and linking to the one file? It would be amazing.

Livvy: That happens, you should like do a little clapping.

Mitch: Wishful wishful thinking, maybe.

Livvy: Keep it going. Are there any more signs of progress that you guys would say are like, yeah, you know something's moving in the right direction?

Mike: Search can find me anything I'm looking for.

Livvy: Amen. That's a great one.

Mitch: Yeah. They don't have to ask. In in the person based knowledge management, a lot of the times it's a spider web from the central person. Yeah. If that person starts to feel less like that person or they start to get some time or sanity back and start to hear the question of can you send me this or that, it's a great great thing for for them.

Livvy: Okay. Well, we were going to talk about something else, but we're kind of running out of time because we like to yap on here.

Mitch: Mike, you've been talking too much.

Livvy: Yeah. Got to reel it back in.

Mitch: Keep it down,

Mike: please. I feel like I contributed.

Livvy: Comment below if you think Mike contributed. We were going to talk about the planning and execution of when you're adopting these new systems, when you're trying to get your workplace to adopt new strategies. There's a ton of discomfort that comes with that. So we were going to dive into that area, but since we're running out of time, I think we're going to close out. But let us know if you want us to make another episode on that, or if you'd like to see content like that, because I know it is a it's felt.

Mitch: We have a link, bulb.digital/feedback.

Livvy: Yeah. Right? Yeah, put it in the Drop us a We'd love it. I want to kind of tie this episode up with a big spoonful of reassurance because I think it's easy for us to sit here and talk about change, especially, I mean, Mitch even said it. I can't even imagine doing some of these things after we've worked here and after you guys have created a lot of these strategies for us.

What are some things that people should celebrate or, honestly leaders should celebrate on their teams that are maybe slow, they're a bit more quieter, but it is still progress. Things are moving in the right direction. What reassurance would you give someone?

Mike: I don't know if this is reassurance, but one of the things I would say is it's never ending.

Livvy: Yeah. It's constant.

Mike: Right? Even like you think you're headed to a destination, but there's gonna be more knowledge to share and organize and, you know, do the right things with. And so there's always improvement, there's things that you can do. I think the hardest part is getting started.

Livvy: It's daunting.

Mitch: Right. We have a whole episode about this isn't set it and forget it. And I think that aligns closely with that of you can't just check this box. It's not a box to check. It's a stream of effort and focus that takes time and you hopefully will transition from an angst like obligation to do this thing and more of like a I have felt the difference this has made in my work.

I can't imagine doing it the other way. Let's keep doing that. And they're hungry for more of the same or looking for other opportunities to do similar efforts.

Matt: Yeah. The thing I would say is that no matter where, what position you are in an organization, you can have an impact on this. You can take this mindset and implement it and use it. It takes effort, it takes time, but you will see change. You will see it improve.

You will see the benefits over time. And like we said here, most of the time there's not any major red flags. You know, we talked about red flags and things. There are things to watch out for to like, hey, this might be something to kind of investigate a little bit more. But most of the time when people start doing this, there's not a complete failure.

It's just a process. As Livia said, it's a moving thing. You're moving towards a goal.

Mike: But Livia asked us for green flags.

Matt: No, I know. Well, you're talking about red flag like, were talking about red flags before

Mike: and the

Matt: fact that we aren't doing red flags like we'd like

Mike: No red flags is a green flag? Yes. Let's talk about some actual green flags though.

Livvy: I have some green flags.

Mitch: You do? Yeah. Are they written on this page?

Livvy: Maybe. Well, no. Well, actually, when I was writing this outline, I feel like, you know, I've worked at I talked about it in the Bald Gals episode. There are so many things that if I could like go to past Livvy, I would have changed so many things about how I worked. And, they wouldn't even been these like large grand scheme things, but they would have made a difference.

So one thing, I think if you were tool hopping less, that would be a major win. If you're not going from tool to tool kind of guessing, you know the intent, even if you're a little off base, you're doing that. And if you're asking more questions, that would be more questions to the right people like, hey, am I doing this right? Am I using this tool correctly? At least you're engaging, at least you're And then if you hear any signs of relief, which I know I said a lot when I started here, when I started using new systems, was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I never used things this way, or I can't believe I did things I can't believe I had v 15 on my computer of a PowerPoint.

Mitch: Final, final.

Livvy: Final final. The keyboard swipe when you don't feel like aiming it.

Mike: Yep. So, Livy, you said, when I think back to old Livy, and I think there's so many things I could have done differently, What percentage of those things do you think you had power over and what percentage of those things were under the purview of the organization that you were working for? Oh How much power did you really have to make change yourself?

Livvy: At the time, I thought zero. But now looking back on it, and I know I'm gonna get some probably people to disagree with me, we all have had a boss that's like, you know, over you, like micromanager. But, these aren't big ideas. So I think it is a little bit more fifty fifty than

Mitch: what I would have That's fun.

Mike: That's cool.

Livvy: Because I could have just started communicating differently.

Mitch: Yeah. Mhmm.

Livvy: It wouldn't have been, you know, this huge.

Mike: That honestly, that's a message of like great hope.

Livvy: Yeah. Should Even

Mike: if you can't get leadership or full organization buy in to go to start the journey, like, you could start something.

Livvy: Create a channel. Start one topic based message, please.

Mike: Right.

Livvy: And see what happens. So, well, I know this is a lot and if you've taken or have not taken our new course three sixty five foundations, I know it's probably not as new now when you're listening to this, we'd love to know your feedback, that bulb Digital slash feedback. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you

Mitch: know what? We actually just had our submission for feedback of I'm eagerly waiting to hit end to this record section.

Livvy: To go look at it.

Mitch: We're gonna see.

Livvy: Mhmm. But if you are interested or have been on the fence about taking our Course three sixty five foundations and a lot of this resonated with you, I highly encourage you to check it out. There'll be a link below. And we can't wait to talk to you on the next episode.

Mitch: Thanks everybody. Hey. Thanks for tuning in to make others successful. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear from you. There's a couple ways you can do that.

One, we'd love for you to rate our show on your favorite podcasting app and then if you have feedback or topic ideas or suggestions for future episodes, head over to bulb.digital/feedback and let us know. Your input is super valuable and we'd love to hear from you. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with others who care about building a better workplace. Until next time, keep making others successful. I'll see you.

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