Change Management: How Functional Resistance Builds Stronger Leaders

Soon after Ryan Klinger joined Old Dominion University's Strome College of Business, his mentor asked him to be a test subject for a simulation still in development. Dr. Bill Judge was building Harvard's Change Management simulation with Forio, and he needed someone to play through it, work out the bugs, and see it from the participant's side. More than 70 facilitated sessions later, Ryan is still running it.

He fell in love with it. "It was like nothing that I had ever used in the classroom," he says. In place of lectures and case studies, here was a way to "put students in a situation where they really struggle, where they really fail," and then find the aha moments in what happened.

In the first episode of Forio's podcast The Debrief, he talked with Brock Vickers about what that simulation reveals about leading change.

Why Change Management Can Be Hard to Get Right

"The two brutal facts about change are that it's inevitable and it's uncomfortable," two facts Ryan says every change leader faces.

He points to Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria's "Cracking the Code of Change" in Harvard Business Review, the source of the widely cited figure that about 70% of change initiatives fall short. For Ryan, the more useful finding is the pattern behind it: "There seems to be a common set of missteps that well-intentioned, knowledgeable people make."

The most common one is speed. "One of the main mistakes we make as change leaders is jumping right into execution," he says. Strong change starts before any initiative exists, with a culture of transparent communication, openness, and two-way dialogue. Once a specific initiative is on the table, the focus shifts to clear, two-way communication about the what, the why, the how and the who, so stakeholders and leaders fully understand each other.

Cognitive Bias in Change Management: Why Smart Leaders Fall Into the Same Traps

After more than 70 sessions, Ryan sees experienced leaders fall into the same traps. "A lot of these traps don't surface because of a lack of intelligence or a lack of experience. They surface because of our own cognitive biases and blind spots."

That is the design principle behind simulations in the Forio catalog like Everest and Judgment in a Crisis: make the blind spot visible in a fail-safe setting.

The change management simulation is also model agnostic. Teams that use Kotter's 8 Steps or Prosci's ADKAR Model can apply their own framework, and the sim shows what happens when a step gets skipped.

What Is Functional Resistance in Change Management?

Resistance is the core challenge of the simulation, and Ryan reframes it. People resist for different reasons: uncertainty, personal impact, lack of ability, or lack of desire. Each calls for a different response. Ryan's guidance for finding the right one:

• Start with empathy. Understand why someone is resisting, and see the change from their side before responding.
• Match the response to the reason. Someone unsure how a change affects them needs a different approach than someone worried about losing resources or influence.
• Match the influence to the person. Some people are convinced by data, some by an emotional appeal, and some by evidence of past successes.
• Keep information flowing both ways. Two-way communication surfaces concerns while there's still time to act on them.

Some resistance is functional. "Functional resistance is resistance that exists because people know something we don't, or because they have a real fear we haven't yet addressed."

The simulation shifts the change leader's job "from getting rid of resistance to managing resistance." Leaders who suppress pushback lose the information they need. Leaders who invite it get healthy resistance, where people say, "I want to help. I want to be part of the solution."

The Debrief Is Where Learning Sticks

Ryan is clear about where the value lands. "The power of the simulation is the conversations that come after it."

His rule for facilitators: "You're the supporting cast. The star of the show is the simulation, and the co-stars are the people going through it."

What that looks like in a debrief:

• Let learners lead. The facilitator's job is to help people discover their own aha moments and bring them into the group conversation.
• Connect the sim to their reality. The strongest debriefs link what happened in the simulation to challenges participants face at work right now.
• Name the gap, then take it to work. Point to the step a team skipped, then ask why skipping it would fail outside the simulation, too.
• Hand over ownership. The more participants own the learning, the more value they take from the experience.

In one recent session, a group of upper middle managers left with a new takeaway: change leadership isn't only for the person with the idea. They walked out saying, "I have a role to play."

His final advice: Keep the learning going after the session ends. Use the simulation to help people make specific commitments to change, so the effects "carry on well after the session ends."

Explore more change management simulations from Forio.

Transcript for Change Management: How Functional Resistance Builds Stronger Leaders

Brock Vickers (FORIO) (00:00) All right, Ryan, we are rolling. Thank you so much for joining me today. Let's start with an easy softball question: where are you joining us from?

Ryan Klinger (OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY) (00:10) I'm in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the southeast corner of Virginia, joining you from my house.

Brock Vickers (00:16) Nice. And the reason you're in Virginia is because you're a professor at what school?

Ryan Klinger (00:22) That's correct. I'm a professor at the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University. I teach undergraduate classes in human resource management, and in the MBA program I teach classes in leadership, emotional intelligence and organizational behavior.

Brock Vickers (00:37) That's kind of how we came to meet each other. Not necessarily through Old Dominion, but we've worked together on the Forio side for facilitation and delivery. The first way I came to meet you was running the Everest simulation, which is something you're very good at. But I'm throwing you a curveball today. We're not talking about Everest. We're going to talk about change management and our change management simulation. Before we dive in, give me a little background on your interest in that subject matter, whether it's leadership in business or something deeper. What attracted you to that field of study?

Ryan Klinger (01:13) It all comes back to the change management simulation, to be honest. When I was hired at Old Dominion University, my mentor, one of the people who hired me and another professor in my department, was developing that simulation in a partnership with Harvard Business School and Forio. He asked me to be the test subject: to go through the simulation, work out the kinks and the bugs, and help him anticipate some of the challenges from the participant side.

I fell in love with the experience. It was like nothing I had ever used in the classroom. We spend a lot of time in the classroom lecturing or going over case studies. Here was an opportunity to put students in a situation where they really struggle, where they really fail, and then explore those situations and find the aha learning moments that come from them.

Working with Dr. Bill Judge on his efforts creating the simulation introduced me to the world of simulations and to Forio. I started using simulations in my own classroom, not only the change management simulation but other leadership simulations. Then, through my connections with Forio, I just kind of stumbled into this.

Brock Vickers (02:22) Nice. It's very similar for me. I stumbled into my role at Forio, and I consider myself one of the luckiest people, because it wasn't something I even knew existed when I first applied. I had to figure out what this thing was. It's been a great trial by fire, almost like a free MBA, working with the people at Forio and with people like you, getting to watch subject matter experts talk about these subjects.

Change management is one I didn't know much about, and it's been fascinating to learn there's this whole field of study within business. We're talking about business today, but it applies to all kinds of organizations: for-profit, nonprofit, government. We're always going through changes, even though as people we want things to stay the same, or think things are like they were 20, 30, 40 years ago. They're not. Especially today, these change processes are speeding up. Organizations used to plan for a slow change. Now the market is adapting and you have to adapt with it. Something that might have taken 10 or 20 years in the past now takes five, or even, "This has got to be different by the end of the year."

Ryan Klinger (03:42) I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head. The two brutal facts about change are that it's inevitable and it's uncomfortable.

It's really difficult in this day and age to create a healthy status quo and maintain it forever. We're going to have to change, whether it's little changes within an organization or transformational changes that change everything about it. And like you mentioned, on the human side, it's just an uncomfortable experience, because of the fear of the unknown, because of the uncertainty, or simply because things change.

Brock Vickers (04:16) Let's lean into that. I'm switching up the order of my questions here, but one of the important things to talk about is why we should look at change management from an academic or theoretical perspective, and also in application. Why should we look at this subject at all?

Ryan Klinger (04:37) That's a great question. I'm reminded of a Harvard Business Review article from probably decades ago, where researchers systematically studied dozens of companies going through transformative change. The article goes into a lot of depth on the individual cases, companies like Amazon and eBay.

But one excerpt still stays with me. It was something along the lines of: the brutal fact is that about 70% of change initiatives end in failure. I think that's brutal for a couple of reasons. First, it crushes you to know that, more often than not, you're destined for failure. Even if you approach change the way other businesses do, which is well-intentioned and well thought out, there's still a really high likelihood that things won't be as successful as you intend.

The other brutal part is the cost of failure. When you try to implement change and get it wrong, it doesn't only take a ton of time and cost a ton of money. It also damages reputations, kills your company's momentum, and can really impact the culture and the people. So it's definitely something we want to get right, and it's definitely something we often don't.

That's where the academic side asks: why is failure so common? One interesting observation is that there seems to be a common set of missteps that well-intentioned, knowledgeable people make. The more we bring those errors to the surface and shine attention on them, the more we can make sure the rest of us avoid them.

Brock Vickers (06:52) It's an interesting thing. I have access to a lot of simulations and I've worked with all kinds of companies, and so have you. You hit on something I find true for a lot of these sims, whether it's Everest or Wildfire or any of the others at Forio: there are common missteps. No matter how smart we are, how educated we are or how much experience we have, these things happen again and again.

It's really nice to be put in a situation where you can make that mistake, you can fail, and it won't cost you. Change management is a perfect example. If you're an organization planning 10, 15 or 20 years ahead, getting it wrong is very expensive. If we know there are common mistakes, how do we get a shot at seeing what happens when we do this at scale?

It's true of so many of these games. You and I work on the Everest simulation all the time, and it's so interesting to see very intelligent, very competent, very successful people step right into the same traps time and time again. It blows my mind.

Ryan Klinger (08:06) Absolutely. That's where the people who develop these sims do such a great job of identifying those common traps and laying them out so that we're going to fall into them, even if we're intelligent and experienced. A lot of these traps don't surface because of a lack of intelligence or a lack of experience. They surface because of our own cognitive biases and blind spots.

The simulations are laid out to let us observe our cognitive biases and blind spots and say, "Even though I thought I'd do just fine in this situation, I'm falling into the same traps as everybody else. I'm so glad I'm falling into them in a fail-safe environment where, at the end of the day, it's just a simulation." I can learn from the experience and try to prevent the same thing from happening in the real world, where the stakes are much higher.

Brock Vickers (09:03) Similarly, there's something I think we often forget, especially with Everest and change management: there's a massive human element in everything we do. There's going to be unpredictability because humans are involved, at least until AI takes over in the next couple of years. For now, we're still dealing with people, and it's always going to be different.

We can have theory. We can look at a book like Good to Great that says these companies follow exactly what a successful organization looks like, and then 10 years down the road half of them have been acquired or gone bankrupt. That's because people are always involved. The change management sim is another interesting example. There are a lot of NPCs in the game. You're not playing with 50 people in real time. They're bots with pre-programmed decision matrices, but you still have to interact with them as if they're people, because resistance and doubt come up. Going back to your point about how difficult change is, so much of it is the human element. How do we plan for that and bring it into the decision-making process?

Ryan Klinger (10:30) The change management simulation is an excellent example. It reminds you, as the change leader, that as important as it is to have a great strategy, great tactics and great resources, influencing people ultimately comes down to managing the human side. These people aren't purely rational beings. They have their own irrationalities, their own emotional takes on things, their own self-interested perspectives. These simulations really remind us of the importance of managing that human side.

And not only managing the people, but managing yourself. One of the most common things I hear from people who go through these simulations is that they felt their emotional side take over. They realized how important it was to have the emotional intelligence to be aware of how their emotions were affecting them, and to regulate those emotions to lead successfully. So the simulation challenges you to manage your own emotions and the human, emotional element of the people you're trying to work with.

Brock Vickers (11:57) One of the things you have to be able to do, and I don't think I'm giving anything away here, is accept that it's not a steady march up the mountain. No matter what scenario you run in the game, there's a lot of two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back. Things go wrong, people don't get in line, and resistance is a big part of the game. You have to constantly reevaluate your strategy.

Speaking for myself, that can be really frustrating, because I love chess, and it's like, "My plan didn't work. Why did you move that pawn?" And chess is a very structured game. With change, a whole number of things get thrown at you. The market can change on you, the industry, the internal company dynamics. The game does a really good job of saying, "This was working, but now it's not, so rethink what's working." That cues up an emotional response within us.

Ryan Klinger (13:02) It also cues up the importance of resilience, and of anticipating that while it's absolutely a great idea to have a great plan, we also have to plan for the fact that our plans might not always work. We have to be resilient and open to modifying our approach.

Brock Vickers (13:20) It gets thrown around a lot, and I've seen you use it and I've used it, but there's the Mike Tyson quote: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. It's very true. A number of years ago I was doing a lot of boxing training for fun up in Philly. I thought I was hot stuff. I could hit the heavy bag and the speed bag, and I thought I was really good. Then in my first sparring session I got hit square in the nose, and all of it just went out of my brain. That's an individual metaphor, but it's true for businesses. When things change on us, we have to be able to adapt quickly. You have a plan, but you have to be ready for the plan to go wrong.

Ryan Klinger (14:05) That's one of the really great things about the simulations: you get immediate feedback. You have an idea, you execute it, and right away you know whether you got punched in the mouth, whether what you're doing is working. In a very short amount of time, you get to live a very long life.

Brock Vickers (14:30) So what factors do we have to consider when we put together a change management plan? We've talked about adaptability being a huge part of it. For people thinking about change for their company or organization, what are the bases? Whether it's one, two, three, or four pillars, however you think about it, what touch points should we always consider before going into a change process?

Ryan Klinger (15:00) It's hard to answer, because there's no formulaic approach to change. It would be very easy if there were a clear recipe, and all I had to do was give you the recipe, and in whatever kitchen you're in, you'd reproduce it and be guaranteed success every time. But every situation, context and approach is different.

While there's no single formula for a successful transition, there are frameworks that help you make sense of the complexity and remind you of the common missteps to avoid. Some of the best frameworks break change management down into a sequential process. They emphasize that there are several stages in a change transition, and each stage has its own important elements required of you as a change leader, and its own goals that set you up for success in the next stage.

One of the main mistakes we make as change leaders is jumping right into execution. We say, "Okay, let's go. Why waste time? Let's get to business and start changing everything." And we forget all the important elements that come before execution, which puts us behind the ball.

So when I think about how to lead change, first and foremost we have to remember everything that's important to do before a change initiative even emerges. Before we even realize what we're trying to change, we need to create a climate that's open to change. We need to build the capacity to change, the mindset that change is inevitable and part of our identity as an organization. We need to exercise the muscle, because the more you go through the process, the better you get at it. Before we know what change initiative we have in mind, we want people practicing transparent communication, openness, collective identity, and valuing an agile world.

Then, as we recognize a change initiative is coming or decide on a specific one, the emphasis shifts from general to specific. Our preparation shifts from building the general capacity to change to preparing for the specific initiative we're about to undertake. That's where we need clear communication about the what, the why, the how and the who, and that communication needs to be two-way. We need to fully understand what stakeholders are going through, and they need to fully understand our expectations as change leaders, so everybody's on board.

Brock Vickers (18:13) It's a mistake I completely understand. A lot of what I did in my youth was improv, where I love to just get in and break things. "We're not going to figure this out, so let's go in, make mistakes and fix it as we go." That works for some things, but not everything, especially in organizations, and without giving anything away about the game here.

Organizations, especially large companies and corporations, aren't built to change. They're built to say, "We sell this widget, this way, with this supply chain, and this is how it works." People get really good at that one thing. Then all of a sudden it's something as simple as, "We're instituting a new CRM," or "We want to use new email software." Frank has been using the same thing for 15 years and he's really good at it. That's small-scale stuff, but now you're asking him to switch, and his entire flow is off. Little changes like that can have big impacts if we're not ready to be mobile. Then you throw something big into the loop and it becomes much bigger.

Ryan Klinger (19:40) I'm a casual do-it-yourselfer, and I'm the type who makes all the same mistakes change leaders commonly make. I have no real plan. I start my project, realize I'm missing something, and have to go to Home Depot or Lowe's to buy that one screw. I come back, and two steps later I realize I'm missing something else. I have to go back to Home Depot, then watch the YouTube videos.

I compare myself to the handyman with the van full of supplies, who knows everything they'll need before they even start. They've planned not only the actions, but the resources, the timing and the sequencing. I'm jealous of that person, but I also see the value of doing things the right way and being more like them.

Brock Vickers (20:34) You compared it to a handyman, and I'm thinking about cooking. You've got the recipe book, you glance at it and think, "All right, I'm good." Then you get toward the end of the meal and realize you forgot a key ingredient, like a tablespoon of sugar, because all you did was glance at the recipe. That can be the fun of cooking sometimes.

I've seen memes about this online: you look at the recipe and it says a teaspoon of salt. You look again and it says a teaspoon of salt. You put in the teaspoon, look back, and it was a tablespoon. Granted, you can fix that one; the joke works better the other way around. But there are a lot of plans, recipes and expertise out there. There's the Kotter model, there's ADKAR, there are all these frameworks.

Something you said is really interesting: they all can work. But a lot of times when we go into change processes, we almost expect the model to be holy writ. "If I do these steps in this order, it's going to work." And it doesn't. Can you talk more about some of the models that exist, whether there are common pitfalls with them, and about using them while also being willing to move away from them?

Ryan Klinger (22:02) If we're talking specifically about the change management simulation, one of its beauties is that it's model agnostic. It's designed to set up a situation where any of those models can be applied. That's really nice, because sometimes a client says, "We really like Kotter's model. That's the language we use in our company," and another situation uses a different model, and they both fit.

I think all these models fit the simulation because the simulation reminds us what happens if we get the steps wrong. With any of these models, there's an expectation of things you need to do. Within the simulation, if you don't do one of those things, the process becomes much more difficult. I'm not sure I answered exactly what you were asking.

Brock Vickers (22:57) No, actually, you reminded me of something that always comes up. This is a simulation where people want to know the answers. "What was I supposed to do? I got it wrong. Ryan, you're the expert facilitator. Tell me which lever I pulled at which time is why I messed up." The game isn't really about that. Often the people who struggle with it take so much more out of it, because they think, "If I could do this again." In your experience, what's the real value of getting to go through a change process, versus "I got this right"?

Ryan Klinger (23:51) Learning by action and by experience is a really powerful thing. One of the real values of these simulations is this: when we study models or read case studies about what other people have done, it's easy to say, "I would never do that. Of course I wouldn't make that mistake." It's easy to look at a checklist and mentally say, "I'd do that, I'd do that, I'd do that."

But when you get into the simulation, your own assumptions, intuitions, skills and limitations are on full display. Even if we fully intended to do everything by the model, when our actions aren't consistent with it and we suffer the consequences, we can shine a light on that and say, "See that one thing you didn't do? Let's talk about why that might not have worked in the simulation, and more importantly, why it won't work in the real world."

Using the simulation to introduce or reinforce the models is very powerful. To take it one step further, it reinforces the idea that we might not always realize our own shortcomings, or the consequences of not fully understanding or applying the models.

Brock Vickers (25:18) With this simulation especially, I always think about "the map is not the territory," because it works on a couple of levels. You have change management theory. You have the case study. You've got Kotter's book and who knows how many other books about how to successfully lead change or lead an organization through a crisis. You have to remember that's a map, looked at from the top down. Then there's the simulation, which puts you in an experiential situation. But it's still a model. It gives a better idea of what it would be like to be in that situation. Once you're in the fray, in the jungle, it's not the same as looking at the map and saying, "The treasure's over here."

Ryan Klinger (26:03) That's where the simulation is a great environment for learning. But if anything, I think the power of the simulation is the conversations that come after it. It's getting people together in the debrief and creating a collaborative learning experience, where people pull out their own aha moments and connect them with their experiences and with the trials and tribulations they're currently facing. They create a shared understanding of problems, a shared language and a shared experience to work from.

I always tell myself and others that the simulation doesn't have to be 100% realistic. It doesn't have to map onto every experience you have. The goal of the simulation is to encourage the conversations that make the learning and the models real, so we can see the real-world actions we can take in our own lives.

Brock Vickers (27:11) That's something I learned from watching you facilitate, with this simulation and a number of others. You can empower your teams, learners or students by continuing the experiential learning process into the debrief. Sometimes we all want to be the sage on the stage, as Mike Roburio likes to say, but with these sims it's better to carry the experiential process into the debrief: ask questions, hear what people experienced. That's something I picked up from you, empowering your learners to lead their own debrief.

Ryan Klinger (27:50) I think that's the hardest part of being a facilitator. A lot of us get into the role because we're good at leading things and taking over situations. But when you facilitate, you have to remind yourself that you're the supporting cast. The star of the show is the simulation, and the co-stars are the people going through it. Your role is to facilitate the discovery of those aha moments and get them into the collective conversation. That's where the real beauty gets made.

Of course, having the subject matter expertise to tie things back to the models, and enough familiarity with the simulation to tie things back to it, is always important and valuable. But you learn through experience that the more you let other people take ownership of the learning journey, the more valuable the experience generally is.

Brock Vickers (28:55) I want to go back, which is probably bad hosting, but there's something we were talking about that I want to make sure we touch on, because it's an important part of the game. Change leaders, facilitators, anyone going through these processes often treat it like a bad word, or treat this person as the antagonist, and that's not necessarily true. I want to hear what you have to say about resistors and resistance.

Ryan Klinger (29:24) I knew that was going to be the dirty word. I resisted.

Brock Vickers (29:27) Whether you consider yourself an academic, an intellectual or a businessperson, it gets framed, even just by the nature of the word "resist," in an antagonistic, dramatic way. But that's not necessarily true. I've seen you have a lot of great conversations about how resistance can actually be a positive thing, and how one of our greatest strengths is seeing where we're running into obstacles and asking whether they have a point. Before I ruin anything you have to say, let me kick that over to you.

Ryan Klinger (30:10) Absolutely. For anybody not familiar with the simulation, one of its main challenges is that despite your well-thought-out ideas, you encounter resistance. You encounter people in the organization who don't share your vision and don't seem to be influenced by your approaches. Nobody argues that that isn't the real world. In the real world, you're going to encounter resistance to your ideas and people who resist.

So the simulation challenges us to think about how to manage resistance within a change initiative. A couple of important points typically come out of the debrief. First, there's no one-size-fits-all approach, because people resist for many different reasons. Some resist because they're unsure what's going on and don't know how it will affect them, so they're hesitant. Some resist because they're sure what's going on and know it won't benefit them personally. Some resist because they can't do something. Some resist because they don't want to.

That emphasizes that a lot of times resistance is rational, or at least justified in the mind of the person. We shouldn't enter a change initiative assuming resistors are bad people, bad apples or bad seeds, or that if they're resistant, they're wrong. We need to show the empathy it takes to figure out why they're resisting and understand it from their perspective.

And because there are different reasons to resist, there are different approaches to managing resistance. The approach you'd use if somebody doesn't know how change will affect them personally is very different from the approach you'd use if somebody is worried it will reduce their resources or political power.

So it's important to understand there's no one-size-fits-all approach, that you have to target your approach to the resistance, and that there may be valid reasons people resist. This is also where we have really fruitful debrief conversations: understanding the value of resistance, and that in many cases there's functional resistance. Functional resistance is resistance that exists because people know something we don't, or because they have a real fear we haven't yet addressed. For those types, we want the resistance to come to the surface so we can address it and remove the uncertainty or the fear.

The simulation does a really good job of shifting our role as change leaders and change agents from getting rid of resistance to managing resistance. It shows that resistance can be functional, which requires us to do what's necessary to create healthy resistance. Healthy resistance is where people say, "I want to help. I want to be part of the solution. I want to raise my concerns in a way that gets us to the bottom of this." What you don't want to do is keep smashing resistance down so people stop raising concerns. Then you're operating in an environment where you, as the leader, don't understand the situation you're leading, and you make mistakes.

Brock Vickers (34:07) On mistakes, maybe not specific to the sim but thinking in terms of a model: are there common mistakes that really lead to a failed change process? Anything that stands out in your experience and expertise as something we have to be very conscious of and really want to avoid?

Ryan Klinger (34:36) One of the main things is understanding the human element: having a good idea doesn't ensure everybody will feel the same way or adopt it. A human transformation needs to happen. You need to connect with people so they see the idea as good for them or for the organization.

Also, understand that everybody's different. Some of us are very data-driven and will be convinced by a report full of summaries and graphs. Others are more emotionally driven and need an emotional appeal. Others are driven by evidence of past successes. We all have different ways of being influenced.

So as the influencer, first, we have to not assume everybody will instantly adopt our ideas. Then we have to not assume everybody will be influenced the same way. And we have to not assume we have all the answers. Going back to the conversation about resistance, we have to create an environment where information flows in two directions, so we can incorporate new information into our efforts as we go and create a successful transition.

Brock Vickers (36:05) Nice. We're getting toward the end, and there are a couple of things I'm always curious about. First: are there any standout resources, whether books, lectures or courses? Obviously the change management simulation is one. Anything from your years that's not required reading, but a really great place to go if you want to dive in?

Ryan Klinger (36:34) There are really good books out there, and really good TED Talks and Harvard Business Review articles. But again, the power of the simulation is that it's resource independent. It doesn't require any specific resources. What I've found is that rather than introducing new resources alongside the simulation, it's always more powerful to integrate the simulation with what's going on inside the specific company: its vision, mission statement, goals and objectives, and the trainings it already has. That creates consistency of messaging. You use the simulation to reinforce the company's values and existing trainings, and as a shared experience you can map onto how things are going.

Brock Vickers (37:37) Last question. Do you have any standout experiences or stories from the field? We can go Dragnet and say the names and places have been changed to protect the innocent.

Ryan Klinger (37:53) No!

Brock Vickers (37:54) Or in this case, maybe they're not. Is there a really great story from leading this?

Ryan Klinger (38:01) The amazing thing about the simulations is that no matter how many times you run one, no run is the same as the last. Every one has its own feel, its own language, its own aha moments. I've run the change management simulation probably close to 70 or 80 times now.

The last time I ran it, one group's takeaway was: sure, the simulation prepares you to lead change, but it also helps you understand a change leader's perspective, so you can do a better job supporting the change from whatever role you have in the organization. I don't hear that very often, but it was so important to them. That group was upper middle management. They don't always come up with the ideas. It's generally somebody else's idea, but they're instrumental in whether it succeeds.

I love those aha moments where a group takes the simulation somewhere it isn't necessarily intended to go and says, "This really fits for me personally. I'm walking away with a completely different mindset." Rather than getting a message from the CEO that says, "We have to change, this will be really hard, make it work," they hear that same message and say, "I have a role to play. There are things I can do to support the initiative, help deal with resistance and help with the different stages. And there are things I can do that won't help and will keep the initiative from succeeding."

Brock Vickers (39:56) Thank you very much for your time today, Ryan. To anyone watching: if you want to hire Ryan, you're more than welcome to. He facilitates with us regularly, which is why I wanted to have him on. It's always a great time chatting with you and working with you when we run simulations. Before we close, anything else you want to share?

Ryan Klinger (40:18) If there are ever any fears about facilitating these events, one of the good things is that the simulation itself is such a powerful tool, and the support team around you will put you in a position to succeed. Your role as facilitator is to encourage everybody, keep them engaged and help them discover their personal aha moments.

I also want to point out that it's really important as a facilitator not to let the learning end when the simulation turns off. Use the simulation to kickstart future conversations and to help people make specific commitments to change, things they can hold themselves accountable to, so the effects of the simulation carry on well after the session ends.

Brock Vickers (41:22) Thanks again, Ryan. We'll close it out here. If you're interested in learning more about the change management simulation, reach out to us at sales@forio.com, or go to forio.com and check out any of the 65-plus sims we have. Ryan runs many of them, and I'm sure we'll have him back to talk about Everest and several of the other sims he runs with us. Thanks again for your time, and hopefully we'll see you on another episode.

Ryan Klinger (41:49) Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Brock.