5 Step Reinforcement
5 Step Reinforcement

5 Step Reinforcement

Intrapreneur and longtime LinkedIn VP Mike Derezin shares Step 2 of 2 of our favourite framework for leading large groups through change.

What’s 5-Step Reinforcement?

5-Step Reinforcement is part 2 of 2 of Mike Derezin’s change management frameworks, building upon Part 1, The Support ContinuumThe Support Continuum.

5-Step Reinforcement walks us through how to move from the Support Continuum getting our team in the right mindset for change to successfully executing that change through a sequence of 5 steps:

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  1. START WITH WHY: Clearly connect the change to why it matters for our company and/or customers. Remember that we as leaders could have prepped for weeks or months and feel impatient to go, but the change will be brand new to our employees, so we need to calmly explain the rationale over and over until they have the same understanding we do.
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  1. LEAD FROM THE FRONT: Be visible and vocal about the importance of this initiative, constantly beating the drum. Lead ourselves rather than delegating to others to show the initiative is worthy of our time investment and, therefore, our team’s investment too.
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  1. MEASURE THE RIGHT THINGS: Track the metrics or, ideally, the metric that matters. Align across our team we’ll track a range of metrics, but the most important gauge for the success of this change initiative is metric A. This is what we’ll always keep upfront-and-centre.
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  1. CELEBRATE MONEYBALLERS: Inspired by Billy Beane and the Oakland As baseball team finding undervalued players to add to their roster, celebrate those in our org leading on the metric we’ve introduced (see #3). To use a sales example, it could be celebrating and elevating reps seeing meaningful traction selling a high-priority new product.
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  1. HOLD OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE: Incorporate success in driving our change into the incentives we offer, whether via immediate compensation or via the performance management processes we use around reviews, promotions, and internal mobility opportunities.

When to use 5-Step Reinforcement?

Whenever we're leading a major change initiative, especially one that involves emotions and will take a long time to progress. Perhaps we're being acquired or acquiring a company; maybe we're overhauling our compensation structure internally or pricing structure externally; could be we're sunsetting a product or launching a new one.

If something is going to take multiple quarters or even years, we highly recommend 5-Step Reinforcement, which we’ve both used successfully several times.

How do we use 5-Step Reinforcement?

John:

After going through numerous change management initiatives over the years - including many led by Mike directly while we were all at LinkedIn together - I’ve noticed things go wrong when we forget to follow these methodologies. Sometimes I or we have assumed change management will be easy and we’ve forgotten to apply The Support ContinuumThe Support Continuum and 5-Step Reinforcement. Occasionally, we get lucky, and things go smoothly, but usually, it’s an unforced error, and then we end up having to put in materially more effort to get things back on track.

James:

Yup, fixing things after the fact always takes more time than if we’d just invested more up-front. I always come back to “Start with Why” as a great reminder, especially if I’ve known about a change for a long time before it’s announced. A while back, we were going through a major reorg, and I’d been aware of it for at least a month before it was announced. I remember telling myself numerous times, “Slow down, keep explaining the Why” when mentally all I wanted to do was focus entirely on the How and the Next. I was on Day 34, but most of the team was on Day 4, and it’s their preparedness that matters.

John:

I’ve felt that “I’m ready, LET’S GO!” mentality too, when the team needs more of a “Do you understand? I have as much time as you need to explain and answer Questions” approach.

Connected to being impatient, one of the big takeaways for me with both The Support ContinuumThe Support Continuum and 5-Step Reinforcement here is the value of being methodical about change: the method is as important as the change itself. Often, by being more thoughtful up front, we actually move faster post-change because we have a stronger handle that things are going well and more confidence to push faster where appropriate.

The other element that resonates with me is the value of celebrating wins and what’s going well: teams tend to spend a lot of time worrying about what may go wrong - the “Doom” scenario from our Doom & BoomDoom & Boom Blueprint - and less time reinforcing what’s going right. I love Mike’s Steps 3 of “Measure The Right Things” and “Celebrate Moneyballers” because they both offer opportunities to reinforce what’s going well.

James:

We relied heavily on “Measure The Right Things” and “Celebrate Moneyballers” in the most complex change management effort I ever helped lead, migrating 10+ customers and 10M+ learners from Lynda.com (whom LinkedIn acquired) to our LinkedIn Learning product. We launched a bare-bones LinkedIn Learning product initially and then tracked how quickly sales reps sold it when they still had the option to sell the legacy Lynda.com offering. As a product leader, over ~18 months, much of our roadmap focused on shoring up gaps and objections from our sales team, tracking the % of $$ that were from LinkedIn Learning rather than Lynda.com, increasing it from 0% to 100% over time (led by Mike as our revenue leader). We also celebrated reps who were leading the pack on selling LinkedIn Learning, the Moneyballers in Mike’s parlance. 5-Step Reinforcement is indispensable for driving change on highly complex projects.

Want to learn more?

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON 5-STEP REINFORCEMENT WITH MIKE DEREZIN?

Mike has an excellent ~20-minute LinkedIn Learning course on “Leading Your Team Through Change” that digs into this topic and more [Note: LinkedIn Learning is a paid subscription product with free trial options; neither of us makes any money from LinkedIn anymore!].

Here’s a good piece by a former Amazon exec, including the memorably phrase, “At Amazon, we spent significant effort trying to turn every door into a two-way door.”

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON CHANGE MANAGEMENT?

This is a topic full of oldie-but-goodie business books. Here are 3 of the best selling all-time:

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON START WITH WHY?

Simon Sinek has authored several books, but we recommend you begin with Start With Why:

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON MONEYBALLERS?

You’ve got a choice of the excellent Michael Lewis book or the equally excellent Brad Pitt film:

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