Hilary Ware:

You need to engage the hearts and minds. You can go and ram something through, but that typically isn't gonna have sustainability or longevity, both in corporate transformations as well as personal. You need to look for the silver lining and make the most of it and see what you can. Distract from it. If you've done a good job of your values, you never have to change them. They'll live essentially forever.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:00:35] Imagine the HR executive who built BP's first global outsourcing engine, then tamed to 24 conflicting Bristow helicopter cultures only to finally help Rocket Chene into LNG stardom. She's now teaching leaders to transform before the fog rolls in. We're talking about Hillary Ware, the ultimate change whisperer.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:00:53] Her playbook is pure turbulence to tailwind. Let's jump in.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:00:59] [00:01:00] Hillary, thank you so much for being here, for Rethink Change. We're so glad you're here and God knows that you've had a career of dealing with change, and we're gonna be talking about that this morning.

Hilary Ware:

[00:01:10] Well, thank you for having me, ward.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:01:12] I'm very aware of your work at BP and Bristow and at Shanie, and I know you're consulting now and building a new business, but I want to just touch on those different assignments.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:01:24] What you learn from each of them and how you're going forward with that and the things that you had to deal with. Wonderful. Because I know they were all perfectly smooth sailing. They were no problem. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So tell me a little bit, I don't know much about what you did at bp.

Hilary Ware:

[00:01:38] BP was actually the.

Hilary Ware:

[00:01:40] Role that started me on the transformation journey. I was a career HR person there, moved all around through all their businesses, upstreams chemicals, downstream aviation business. So I saw a wide variety of what they did and I moved with them geographically as well, [00:02:00] probably about 15 years into my career with them.

Hilary Ware:

[00:02:02] So I was with BP 23 years. I was asked to join kind of the thought leadership of BP at that point that were thinking about outsourcing all of the staff functions. So they were well on their way to outsourcing it. They were well on their way to outsourcing finance and accounting, and they thought, what about hr?

Hilary Ware:

[00:02:24] I actually spent two years trying to start the outsourcing market in HR outside. Find people that would actually be the recipients to take this outsourcing business. 'cause it really didn't exist then. And the whole model was the concept of what we live with today, which is, uh, applying technology, customer service tools.

Hilary Ware:

[00:02:49] Ability to take transactions and make them much more effective and efficient ability to offshore it. We were able to find three potential partners. [00:03:00] We actually selected one globally, if you can believe it. We selected a company that only had four employees at the point. We selected them. They were going to really grow.

Hilary Ware:

[00:03:10] We did it on the back of the Amaco, Arco, and Burma Keal mergers. So we outsourced HR globally and we integrated the mergers after that. For me, there wasn't another job, ATP that could be as fun. I was hooked and I was also hooked on the fact that transformation was where I wanted to be. Steady state was not for me.

Hilary Ware:

[00:03:35] And that became the hallmark really, of my career. And as I got hired into new roles, I was brought in specifically for the transformation. So I went to Hanover Compressor after that with Chad Deaton. And then Bristol Helicopters was a huge transformation, more as you know. And, uh, nie in a similar vein.

Hilary Ware:

[00:03:58] Now all my [00:04:00] work, consulting wise is in the transformation space.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:04:03] So when you went to Bristow, there was quite a lot of turmoil, and can you tell me what you faced and how you addressed it?

Hilary Ware:

[00:04:12] Well, you faced a situation where Bristol was really, it had never been integrated. It had acquired. Uh, companies all over the world and they'd never integrated them, and there was a lot of conflict between the Eastern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere, which was really the UK and the rest of the world.

Hilary Ware:

[00:04:30] Really the Louisiana United States. So we had to start by looking at what we needed to do to create some commonality that people could buy in and drive down through the company. And it started with agreeing a whole series of leadership principles, which included the values. That the company wanted to have, it included the behaviors, how we wanted to work, and then it included principles about governance and how you checked [00:05:00] in and who owned what.

Hilary Ware:

[00:05:02] And that was a lot of work to do because we were 23, 24 countries and culturally as diverse as could be. So we brought groups in that represented it, and then we set that. Charter, if you will, and then began a lot of leadership development. But we did leadership development in a really custom way. They were really symposiums filled with dialogue, filled with problem solving, filled with cases that were bristow.

Hilary Ware:

[00:05:31] So that the leaders coming in felt they were part of the change process and had input to it. I think the biggest thing though was to keep it simple and keep it very, very focused. There's a tendency to try to change everything and try to do it all at once, and it's just too much for the countries, let alone the people.

Hilary Ware:

[00:05:52] To absorb. So that was a huge, uh, tenet of all the changes we went through Bristow.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:05:58] What were some of the lessons [00:06:00] learned as you went through this? Each, each position you've had has been, you've walked out going, wow, I hadn't thought of that. I'm not gonna do that again.

Hilary Ware:

[00:06:07] Well, I think one lesson learned is it's not simple and you need to engage the hearts and minds.

Hilary Ware:

[00:06:16] You can go and ram something through, but that typically isn't gonna have sustainability or longevity. So there's an engagement process and there's a change management process, and it cannot be underestimated. And probably at the fulcrum of that change management process is communications and how well you communicate out to your stakeholders.

Hilary Ware:

[00:06:39] Understanding how they receive information. So probably the most interesting things about Bristow, even Hanover and certainly NIE and the LNG companies I work with is their stakeholders are really diverse. You've gotta be able to speak to the pilots who are flying. You've gotta speak to the mechanics.

Hilary Ware:

[00:06:59] In the case of [00:07:00] Bristow. They absorb and get information differently. Most of the Bristow employees were shift hourly workers and also unionized, and so that created a whole nother set of just challenges and how you got information out and spending enough time thinking about how you're communicating and what the media is, is really important.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:07:24] With Bristow, I know that safety was a huge agenda with Bill. Tell me about how you really shepherded that.

Hilary Ware:

[00:07:32] Well, so Bill was really clear. Safety was number one. It, it was none compromising and he exhibited it from the top and everyone of his leadership were required to exhibit and bill traveled the world.

Hilary Ware:

[00:07:49] Speaking about safety. When I joined Bristow, I can remember this really clearly. It was New Year's Eve and they had had a fatality in the Gulf of [00:08:00] Mexico, and Bill called me at home and said, we're getting on a plane and going to Gulf of Mexico. We've had a fatality. We're standing down, we're speaking to the family, we're speaking to the teams, and you'll see how this process worked.

Hilary Ware:

[00:08:14] And Bill never wavered. It was non-negotiable. It helped in that it was so non-negotiable that the compensation was heavily tied to it. So if you had a fatality, the bonuses were zeroed out, didn't matter how well the company was performing. And once you have rigor like that, people start paying attention.

Hilary Ware:

[00:08:37] And particularly when it's led from the top

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:08:40] and with something like that, there are consequences beyond no bonus. It's like if you can't be on board, you gotta go.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:08:48] You're

Hilary Ware:

[00:08:48] gone.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:08:48] What kind of turnover did you have that where people said, I'm just not into this so much.

Hilary Ware:

[00:08:53] You didn't have the turnover of people saying they weren't into it.

Hilary Ware:

[00:08:57] I think that's benefited by [00:09:00] aviation, but I think today most operational environments get it. You've gotta have it. They understand the care and custodianship of your employees and returning them home safely when they're done their shifts. It was more not understanding what was involved and continually bypassing or short cutting.

Hilary Ware:

[00:09:21] Some intentional, some not.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:09:24] You've dealt with so many different challenges across different organizations. Were there any similarities across the companies that really surprised you?

Hilary Ware:

[00:09:31] Oh, yes. One is failure to develop those principles in saying we, we know who we are, we know what our values are, and in fact, they really hadn't had the hard conversations and certainly hadn't had the hard conversations about behaviors.

Hilary Ware:

[00:09:46] They also had not had the hard conversations about how they work together. And another commonality is trying to do too much too fast. Every one of those organizations needed to really focus [00:10:00] in on what the end goal was and remain very focused and hold people accountable as they move forward while they were communicating and being sure that all levels of the organization underst understood exactly where they're headed.

Hilary Ware:

[00:10:14] And that failure was very common. Getting them to pull in wasn't natural.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:10:23] Can you tell us an individual story of one of those efforts? There's, there's many.

Hilary Ware:

[00:10:30] So in Shanie we had the benefit of a very focused CEO that came in after Cheniere was launched in a very entrepreneurial fashion. When I joined, it was kind of, let's make a deal and we all do our own things.

Hilary Ware:

[00:10:45] And this very disciplined focused executive came in to lead Cheniere and he was a master at being really clear on what we were doing, but even more importantly, really clear in what we were not going to do. [00:11:00] Because you bring in a team of people that you wanna transform and they all come in wanting to do their thing and learning to scale your past experiences.

Hilary Ware:

[00:11:11] To what's appropriate for the company you're in is something that a lot of people don't understand. So you bring people in from big companies, they try to take a BP process, they try to put it on a little tiny company. And it just won't work. So those are probably the most common themes you see. And it takes a lot of time and conversation with the executive teams that they have to pause and work together to kind of develop this.

Hilary Ware:

[00:11:40] And then they have to figure out how they're gonna hold the company accountable, both as a company and individually for performance.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:11:47] In your experience, often values can just be words on a poster on a wall. How do you go about developing values for an organization that people can really live and get behind?

Hilary Ware:

[00:11:58] So you move to the behaviors [00:12:00] that support them. What are the behaviors you're going to exhibit? That says you hold this value and then you make it really clear to the organization what the expectations are, but you continue to measure it. And measurement could be focus groups, it could be surveys, it can be walking around, it can be examples of incidents that happen and did we, you know, exhibit our values and behavior.

Hilary Ware:

[00:12:25] But you, you never can lay it down. You've gotta continue pushing it and monitoring it.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:12:31] You're consulting now you're starting a new company to do transitions. If I were to approach you and I've got a company that's going through a lot of change that's growing very quickly, we're bringing on new people, and I come to you and say, help us work this out.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:12:47] What would be kind of the ground rules that you would set before you would even talk to us?

Hilary Ware:

[00:12:52] So my new company won't be doing companies, right? Right. It'll be doing individuals. But the first ground rule [00:13:00] word is that you, you're committing the time and you're committing the stakeholders at the highest level to do this.

Hilary Ware:

[00:13:06] And quite frankly, you were instrumental in influencing me from a technique perspective. I mean, your guardrail session is. An example of where they've gotta go and the conversations they've gotta have. And that starts it. And it continues as you move through.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:13:24] And I understand in your new role you're dealing with transforming people, but there would be theoretically some of the same.

Hilary Ware:

[00:13:31] It's all the same word. It that, that's was probably the fascinating piece as I started studying personal transition and what makes an individual be successful. Against many things that come along, whether it's illness, whether it's caretaking a family, whether it's losing a job, um, retiring. It's typically people that have who pause and think about their life.

Hilary Ware:

[00:13:59] [00:14:00] Have a set of, um, operating values that govern their lives, but mindfully plan, mindfully think ahead. And so you use a lot of those same principles. In fact, one of the strategic life planning processes I use is extracted right out of company life planning and. Also developing a resilience and a community, which again, while it's a personal community in a company, you need to have a community as well as you move through these things.

Hilary Ware:

[00:14:32] So they're very, very similar. Setting goals, keeping it prioritized, keeping it focused, only doing as much as you can handle at a point. Getting help. Very, very similar.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:14:42] Can you give me an example, a case study of, uh, of one where you worked somebody through this?

Hilary Ware:

[00:14:49] So over the last year, I've had 15 different cases.

Hilary Ware:

[00:14:55] These were typically career, but often when you dig deeper, there's other [00:15:00] things going on, whether it's a divorce or struggling with caretaking or something that is impacting it. These were all individuals under. 45 and either wanted to change their jobs or were unhappy with their jobs or had lost their jobs.

Hilary Ware:

[00:15:19] And so you spend a lot of time at the outset understanding just what makes them tick. How do they think about the world, how do they approach this? Don't just change for change is sake. That's not for someone who's lost their job, but be very thoughtful. Be very mindful. Think about what you're trying to set up for the longer term.

Hilary Ware:

[00:15:39] The other thing with the age group of kind of the thirties into the mid forties is you don't have to solve every life problem in the decisions you make today. Try to look at this in five year increments. Where would you like to be? Keep your values as your longer term and work through it. And then helping them [00:16:00] develop a roadmap that they are accountable to.

Hilary Ware:

[00:16:03] You know, if you, if you need a new job. What are you gonna do and what's the work you're gonna do and what's it gonna look like and by when and how are you going to network and think about this? And so it's very incremental and step by step.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:16:17] So this is life therapy.

Hilary Ware:

[00:16:19] It is. It's, except you have to be really careful from my perspective that we know when to stop the line.

Hilary Ware:

[00:16:27] We are not therapists and say, you really would benefit from a therapist.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:16:32] This is so fascinating. The jump from doing it for corporations, which is essentially a large human organization. Yes. To a small organization of a single person.

Hilary Ware:

[00:16:42] And a lot of the tools you use are the same. I mean, people going through transition need to communicate.

Hilary Ware:

[00:16:50] Their stakeholders are different, but whether it's family or friends or partners, you know, they have a communication piece, they have a planning piece, they [00:17:00] have a focus piece.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:17:01] Did you have any. Experience with companies that you were brought in to do this very thing, and it just became clear early on it wasn't gonna work and why?

Hilary Ware:

[00:17:11] Yes. They just, they didn't have the commitment and the ability to pull their stakeholders together. And they were run by a number of different people from different companies that all had their own ideas. And quite frankly, the politics and the infighting was so divisive they, they couldn't even get together as an executive team over the table.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:17:32] So you identified that, you went to the CEO and said, here are the problems you got. What were the solutions that you proposed that they clearly didn't take?

Hilary Ware:

[00:17:41] Well, the solution was you need to bring your team together. And have these conversations and you need to take on board what's working and what isn't.

Hilary Ware:

[00:17:49] The um, outcome was, I stopped consulting for them. He didn't agree. He felt it was the people on his team's problem, [00:18:00] not his. And ultimately a couple months later, he left and a new CEO came in and by that point they had really lost most of the company.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:18:11] How often do you say that these executives even see the extent of the problem or they just forced through the trees?

Hilary Ware:

[00:18:18] It depends. It, it really depends on their experience in change. So like at Chene, the individual that came in as CEO, he was a disciplined, experienced operator and he'd done multiple acquisitions of companies and startups and so on. And he knew that for performance, that discipline and focus was critical.

Hilary Ware:

[00:18:42] It really depends on the heritage of those executives.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:18:46] Can you think of any instances where they were unsuccessful? Change initiative? Or they were particularly challenging?

Hilary Ware:

[00:18:53] Well, the, the company that I first went to work for their effort to change was very unsuccessful. I [00:19:00] think the other thing that's striking is these aren't overnight things.

Hilary Ware:

[00:19:03] These are sustained and you're putting building blocks in place and stepping through it, which like the first company I consulted for, he just wanted it to be different. Those are unsuccessful.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:19:16] Are there any commonalities that you see with unsuccessful initiatives? For instance, lack of alignment with the leadership team, lack of follow through, and an implementation of a of a, of a plan.

Hilary Ware:

[00:19:27] You see all of that. So I have an interesting client right now who is very aligned as a leadership team. On the values and behaviors on paper, but all of the non-performance is the rest of the team. And you, you work with them saying, wait a minute, you own these teams. Are you sure it's moving from you to them?

Hilary Ware:

[00:19:50] They also don't have. True pay for performance yet because they're still putting it in and they don't have focus. They're all trying to do [00:20:00] everything. So trying to get them to prioritize down to a few things is going to take time, and I would say that half the leadership is there and understands it and half isn't, and it's going to take just daily work pulling them forward.

Hilary Ware:

[00:20:15] I think the CEO is pivotal in terms of their ability to see that and hold people accountable.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:20:22] For those executives who are listening, they're listening because of the need to transform. Changes are going on in their business. They may have a sense that they have to change and transform, but what are the the signals that you would look forward to say, boy, if this is happening, it's much more urgent than you think.

Hilary Ware:

[00:20:43] So one, you would look at their business performance. And not at a level. I mean, you may have very poor financial performance, et cetera, but do they make their projects on time? Do they make them under budget? What are their turnover rates? What are their [00:21:00] absenteeism rates? Are people burning out because it's known as a company that never stops?

Hilary Ware:

[00:21:07] Why is it? And then moving further out to actually talk with employees.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:21:12] A lot of the organizations you've worked with had quite an abundance of resources. Uh, what advice would you give the maybe a 20 or 30 person company that doesn't have a, let's say, dedicated human resources component to it? Is there, where would you start?

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:21:29] Where could they get the most bang for their buck? So, so to speak,

Hilary Ware:

[00:21:32] the bone bang for your buck is first of all, understanding what your employees think, what, what's working for them and what isn't, and then. Building upwards as a team, deciding what are these issues? Some may be you can't change. I mean, we've certainly seen that Probably one of the biggest ones out there, of course, is hybrid and remote work right now, and we saw that.

Hilary Ware:

[00:21:55] Complete clash as we came outta COVID. I think what was [00:22:00] important, and the jury's still out, is that companies at least took a stance and communicated the reason for their stance. Employees didn't have to agree with it, but at least they had clarity. And now there are certain functions that they said you'll never hold onto because they're all going remote and that's gonna be your competition.

Hilary Ware:

[00:22:22] And there there's truth in that. But the companies that had lots of other offerings for their employees have not lost as many workers as you would've thought for not offering remote. So it's an example of you've gotta just peel that onion and look at what. All the dynamics are,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:22:41] when you say offerings for the employees, what do you mean by that? [00:22:44] Speaker 4: I mean the programs that you offer employees from their development, from their compensation and benefits from now. Employees are very interested in where you are and climate, where you are, and environmental, [00:23:00] where you are in the community, what you offer there. And again, you've gotta scale it. For what fits your company and what you can afford, but and, and then balance the business with some celebrations, some community, and it's really understanding what your employees feel like and what they want.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:23:21] We're coming out of a period where companies were heralding their efforts to become green and good environmental citizens, and the political winds have changed and say, you don't need to do that anymore. What's going to be the impact on the employees who embrace that, particularly the younger employees and they see that going away?

Hilary Ware:

[00:23:42] I think we don't know, Lord. I think it's, I think it, I, I don't think we know there is too much going on right now to really see what the impact is. You hear both sides. They need to stand up and they need to continue with DEI and so on and [00:24:00] so forth. If they don't, it's not for me, but how many are actually leaving?

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:24:05] It's too early to know, given the turmoil and the chaos in the world around us, how does a company keep their employees focused on moving forward?

Hilary Ware:

[00:24:17] I think you talk to them more than you ever talk to them before. I think you be really clear and you also are empathetic and you appreciate what this chaos is doing to employees, but it means all of your supervisors and leaders need to have know how to communicate.

Hilary Ware:

[00:24:33] They need to know how to sit down and say, Hey, ward, are you okay? Everything all right. And if you say, gosh, I'm really worried and this is going on, have the time to talk to that individual and see how you can reach out. I think it's more important than ever.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:24:49] What are your thoughts around, uh, it's all around the motivation of employees and get people aligned and bought into the vision of the company.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:24:56] Obviously there's a financial component to, to motivation on from a [00:25:00] compensation standpoint, but what are your thoughts around intrinsic motivations? Things that organizations could be doing that aren't necessarily directly tied to an employee's salary or financial, uh, outcome as much as ways to really help elevate the culture and the morale within the company.

Hilary Ware:

[00:25:17] So I think they're very important, but I think it differs by employee group and type of employee you have. There are companies that sole purpose is to make as much money as they can, and the employees are there to do that, and they really are fine 24 7. As long as those financial rewards are huge and they really don't care about the rest and understanding, that's what makes them click.

Hilary Ware:

[00:25:43] That's great, but I think you have to talk because I know the number of times I've watched companies say, this is best practice. This is what employees want. And they go off and they spend all this money and they design all these programs, and they create all these interventions, and the [00:26:00] employees say, that's not what we want.

Hilary Ware:

[00:26:01] What we really wanted was this, so spending time upfront. To really understand the types of things that would be meaningful. Then looking at what your options are across that spectrum. Then looking at what you can realistically afford and realistic and afford means, not just monetarily, time off, et cetera, and then implementing in a phase way and continuing to look at them.

Hilary Ware:

[00:26:26] You have to look at them all the time. People at different phases in their life are going to want different things. So how flexible can you really be? Can you have this generation getting this in your organization and this generation? This? Maybe so, maybe not. But I think once you settle on it, being really specific, how you took their feedback, how you used it, and then continuing to engage them in the conversation of whether it's working or not.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:26:54] Many of the, uh, examples you've given are for very large companies,

Hilary Ware:

[00:26:59] actually [00:27:00] not. Oh, no, no. So, you know, um, most of my LNG companies are about, well, they're currently teeny, I mean, a hundred to 200 people with a hockey stick going up to 500 to a thousand. But nie one of the most successful, if not l and g companies in the world they're at.

Hilary Ware:

[00:27:20] I, I don't think they're over 1800 employees. They're tiny.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:27:24] So if, if it's a smaller company and, and like a bristow that, that, uh, has grown through acquisition, the number of times that you'll have. Well, Bristow is a perfect example where they had a larger company, but it was all individual companies and everybody doing their own thing and their own cultures.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:27:41] And I don't have to talk to these guys. And if something comes down from the top, I don't have to listen to it. 'cause that's not, that's not me. What are some of the ground rules when you advise a company that's about to go through an acquisition that you better do this to get the value you think you're gonna get out of the,

Hilary Ware:

[00:27:57] well?

Hilary Ware:

[00:27:57] There's a lot of things that you do to [00:28:00] get the value from the integration perspective and how you pull it together. But from a cultural perspective, you need to understand what's driving those cultures, and you need to understand where you can find a common point that you can drive for a mutual.

Hilary Ware:

[00:28:13] Commonality forward, and if you need them to let different things go, how you help them let it go. Bristol was particularly interesting because you had a common culture, but it was across 28 countries. So what the Gulf of Mexico wanted and Nigeria wanted, and Russia wanted were totally different. So you had to look at the commonality that kept your structure of what you wanted for your employees, but you had to let some differentiation that was cultural.

Hilary Ware:

[00:28:45] And as you go into a merger, there's a lot of conversations before. And after actively pulling that together,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:28:54] I know with Bristow there was the whole culture in South Louisiana and they had not [00:29:00] real positive views of the Brits. And the Brits had not real positive views, not all views of

Hilary Ware:

[00:29:04] not at all

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:29:05] what they call the Cajuns in Louisiana.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:29:08] Yeah. How did you overcome that?

Hilary Ware:

[00:29:10] Well, so a lot of it was trying all of these things and then quite frankly, saying, knock it off. This is how we're gonna do it. No more if you can't work together. If you can't look at the pieces that are good and share you both have good, then you know, we may need different leaders.

Hilary Ware:

[00:29:29] We also did this leadership development that was worldwide and it was a lot of dialogue and we had the leaders participating, so that would be talked about. So we would bring, I remember we, when we first started. We had a program in Louisiana and we had one in London and the employees were begging to be pulled together 'cause they wanted to know each other, but their management didn't let them communicate.

Hilary Ware:

[00:29:55] We didn't have enough money to pull it together. So we started pulling it [00:30:00] together by phone 'cause we didn't have videos then. And they would talk and they'd do joint projects by phone. Then our real win was when Bill let us start pulling them together and we had them travel. So we pulled leadership groups from all countries.

Hilary Ware:

[00:30:16] We traveled from country to country to country for the meetings. They had a cultural day in the country where they saw sight or did something non-work related. They ate food intentionally designed to teach them. And then we have the sessions together and that. Really started making headway.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:37] How smart. So in each phase of your professional life, you've learned something from the first job and you took it the second job and you learned something, the second job and took it to the third job.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:47] What are some nuggets that you took from each of those stops along the way, even to the point of I'm not gonna do that again. That didn't work Well,

Hilary Ware:

[00:30:56] there, there,

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:30:57] there are a

Hilary Ware:

[00:30:58] number of those, but I [00:31:00] think the nugget one is, I am. Hugely optimistic that there's an opportunity in everything, even if it's doesn't seem at the point that there is both in corporate transformations as well as personal, you need to look for the silver lining and make the most of it and see what you can extract from it.

Hilary Ware:

[00:31:20] That is something that I, for whatever set of reasons, just naturally have, but I think you can help people think about the world differently. For me, it's also something around doing exactly what you would like to do. In a very purposeful way. So for me, I have a set of values and they shape what I stay with and what I don't.

Hilary Ware:

[00:31:44] Insurmountable issues that you have to overcome, happy to work with it, but it has to have guardrails on the values and the behaviors.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:31:53] Can I ask what some of your values are?

Hilary Ware:

[00:31:55] Well, integrity is clearly at the top. [00:32:00] There's a very human value for me in how you treat people. There's a value of gratitude, community support.

Hilary Ware:

[00:32:07] Those are all really important to me.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:32:10] You've come into companies that would have stated values than you would look at and go, those aren't values. How did you change those?

Hilary Ware:

[00:32:19] Well, so we would start with understanding how deep those values moved. And typically what you're looking at is behaviors, that exhibit, and a whole bunch of techniques, which you guys have used, focus groups, surveys, just walking around, talking to people.

Hilary Ware:

[00:32:36] It becomes pretty. Evident pretty quickly whether there's a complete mismatch, but typically it's because there's words on a piece of paper and they've never taken time to look at what the behaviors are positive and negative. So a lot of the work I'm doing with the clients that are developing their values and the behaviors is we spend as much time describing the behaviors that [00:33:00] support the values in a positive way.

Hilary Ware:

[00:33:02] We spend as much time talking about the behaviors that will undo it. And we communicate that so when we go out to the employees, we say, this is what good looks like. This is what poor looks like, and it helps employees in a complicated world kind of understand what you mean. Success looks like.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:33:22] I often tell clients that back in the days of Enron, you'd walk into their headquarters and they would have these giant banners hanging from the ceiling of their values.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:33:31] Honesty, integrity. Oh yes. Community. It turns out those weren't even the beginning. No. Any of the values there,

Hilary Ware:

[00:33:39] but I think, and you and I go back a long way Award, that was the way you did it. Then you just. Posted up values, and I think now you see a lot of really deep work going on and it can be undone.

Hilary Ware:

[00:33:53] One statement in a town hall, one poor behavior at a leadership level, double [00:34:00] standards, employees see that right away.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:34:03] It's interesting you push so deeply into the behaviors side of it. What advice would you give to an organization who have a set of established values? They're not sure if they should change it, but really start to develop a system of behaviors that their employees can gather around.

Hilary Ware:

[00:34:17] So the first is to come together with the group that put the values together to understand why you put them together. Are they still valid? I maintain that if you've done a good job of your values, you never have to change them. They'll live essentially forever. Whereas you'll get called into organizations saying, we wanna change our values.

Hilary Ware:

[00:34:37] And when you typically dig down, it's the behaviors they wanna change. Probably not the values, but the advice is that you move very quickly to focusing on that conversation. So you say honesty is one of your hallmarks. How does that show up for you? What, what are the ways you're going to demonstrate that, but equally [00:35:00] as important, how does it show up if it's not working?

Hilary Ware:

[00:35:03] You do a lot of work at that level,

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:35:05] how do you communicate the, these examples of here's what integrity looks like and here's what it doesn't look like to the organization?

Hilary Ware:

[00:35:12] Well, so the ones that are doing it well, they typically will have some kind of written and splash and they'll do it at a town hall and so on.

Hilary Ware:

[00:35:22] But you've gotta keep it moving and you've gotta have it at. Toolbox meetings every month and you've got to celebrate when somebody did really well and you've gotta share examples that didn't work. You've gotta be relentless in not keeping individuals that don't mirror that and dealing with performance.

Hilary Ware:

[00:35:42] You've gotta be relentless in your compensation and how you award. So it's balancing both the positive reinforcers, but being really clear. And really standing up publicly that that goes against their values. And usually in these businesses, the ones that [00:36:00] really make a difference are those that you are non compromising, even if it would help the business.

Hilary Ware:

[00:36:07] So you're taking a really hard business decision, like Build used to do that said, yes, this business unit is having issues, but we're still gonna invest in safety and we're gonna do it the right way. When you exit a really high performer, that's really popular because they didn't stick with it, the workforce.

Hilary Ware:

[00:36:31] Takes notice.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:36:32] What are your thoughts on the depth of values, corporate values? You know, some organizations maybe will have four or five and others like Amazon have over a dozen.

Hilary Ware:

[00:36:41] I think it depends on their culture. I, my view is the simpler the better. Don't get too many. I have a client that has a 87 page cultural statement.

Hilary Ware:

[00:36:53] I couldn't finish it. I think you have to go back into your workforce and think about how people [00:37:00] consume. Of course every level has a different ability to consume, but if you're, if you're down at the shop floor and on a shift, how much can you take on board when you're coming in and out? What are the simple ones?

Hilary Ware:

[00:37:12] So I will always err on greater simplicity and a lot of face-to-face, a lot of conversation around what they are. But I'll tell you what I've learned from. Hearing about Amazon from people that work there, a number of those are out there and well known, and you have as many employees saying, some aren't working.

Hilary Ware:

[00:37:35] I think you just have to be careful.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:37:37] So switching gears a little bit. How'd y'all, how'd y'all meet? Was it through Bristow? I think I may have already been there. When you got

Hilary Ware:

[00:37:42] there. You were. You were. And I met you. You, well, you'd done Target zero. And which is a safety program. And then we did work with Bristow on multiple things.

Hilary Ware:

[00:37:53] And then, um, you came over to Shaere.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:37:55] What made you call him Oceaneer?

Hilary Ware:

[00:37:58] Oh, I just liked the [00:38:00] way Ward worked. I, I liked his style. I like your team was always highly, highly qualified and I loved the size of the company 'cause it just. There was a lot of flexibility and personalization with the work you guys did, but you always had great talent, and Ward always had really innovative ideas.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:38:20] Thank you. What was the biggest thing you were trying to solve with that Chere phone call?

Hilary Ware:

[00:38:27] NIE needed a lot of the branding work and thinking about their world differently, and they, the internal group didn't have the experience and creativity that comes with experience and the ability to ask risky questions.

Hilary Ware:

[00:38:44] What if we did this? What if we did that? And I think there's times when an outsider is always. Beneficial just gets you out of your rut of how you're thinking. And so bringing in some fresh thought with process and being able to push people, that was really what I was trying to solve. [00:39:00]

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:39:00] What would you describe as the outcome of going through something like that?

Hilary Ware:

[00:39:03] Hopefully there's an objective each time you go into guardrails, but the outcome in the ideal world, and I think the process is hugely rich to do that, is that you walk out very aligned. And very clear on whatever the objective was you set for the guardrail session, and you get into enough detail around accountability and what it is and what it feels like and what success looks like, that they have something that they can use as a roadmap.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:39:35] What do you wish that we had asked you that we didn't?

Hilary Ware:

[00:39:38] I don't think you asked me anything. I wish you hadn't. It's a, it's a such a complex area, but we make it too complex. I think if we can keep it simple, but I'm always peeling back the onion and I, I've been interested how so many of the tools that you use in a corporation, if you think about them [00:40:00] differently, you can use as individuals, but this.

Hilary Ware:

[00:40:04] Simplicity and purpose and accountability I think is just huge. And then understanding that every person is different, so you've gotta meet them where they are.

Ward Pennebaker:

[00:40:13] This has been really, really informative and entertaining. Thank you so much for your time.

Hilary Ware:

[00:40:18] Well, thank you guys.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:40:20] Really appreciate it. Hillary, thanks for listening to Rethink Change.

Matt Pennebaker:

[00:40:23] If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and be sure to follow the show so you don't miss a single episode. If you're a disruptor looking to challenge a status quo and don't know where to start or what to do next. Pennebaker can help find out more@pennabaker.com.