AXIOM Insights Podcast – Leading Transformation Through Training

Scott Rutherford
Hello and welcome to the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development Podcast. I’m Scott Rutherford. This podcast series focuses on creating and supporting organizational performance through learning. And in this episode, we’ll be looking closely at organizations at a time of profound change or business transformation and the role of learning as a core partner in helping the organization and the workforce succeed through that change. And so for before this, I’m joined by an expert in leading business transformation through learning. Nina Hollon is the founder and CEO of Catalyst Learning Strategies, a certified learning strategist and a fractional Chief Learning officer. And her specialty is working with companies going through a merger and acquisition or other transformative change, and in particular, producing and executing the training roadmaps needed to help a company through that type of transformation. And so with that, Nina, thanks so much for being here. It’s great to chat with you.

Nina Hollon
Thank you, Scott. Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to have this conversation today.

Scott Rutherford
So let’s start off broadly, sort of. I want to understand your professional background and the experience you lived that informed and I guess, tested you to respond through transformation. And I understand it’s, well, I’ll let you tell the story in financial services, but it comes back to your history with Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley through their merger.

Nina Hollon
Right. So my background broadly is that I’ve been involved in wealth management or finance for over 30 years. Really. It’s the only industry I’ve ever been part of and so deeply understand the business. And 30 years later, and as I’ve, you know, embarked on this company that I’m, I’m now, I’m now leading, realize that it really is just constant change, change in that industry and I’m sure others, but certainly in finance comes from, as you mentioned, mergers, acquisitions, business transformation, which is cyclical. It can also be as simple as a company’s strategy changing or local initiatives that are happening or regulatory change. So there just seems to be a constant change presence.

And so I learned over time that it isn’t just training sort of in the moment, for the moment, but it’s much more complicated and it’s much broader and it has a before, a during, and an after as well.

Scott Rutherford
So the merger that I mentioned a minute ago, I wonder if you can take us back in time, because my understanding is this happened in 2009, which is really in the throes of the 2008-09 financial crisis.

I basically checked the Wikipedia entry and the headlines around to understand and refresh my own memory about what happened. But it was a Citigroup sale to Morgan Stanley of the investment services arm, is that correct? But correct me if I’m wrong and maybe give me a little bit more understanding of what exactly happened at that point. And for that matter, it wasn’t just this company making a change because it happened in the context of a giant economic upheaval.

Nina Hollon
Right, as it does. Change on top of change on top of change. There’s, there’s, there’s never just an easy kind of straight through.

So back you’re right, it was, there was certainly the financial crisis that was happening in 2008.

But as I think I wasn’t in the room, but I think these conversations happen, you know, way before there’s long period of time where people are making decisions this significant.

And so it was Citi and Morgan Stanley deciding that they would form a joint venture of the wealth management divisions. So Morgan Stanley would acquire the wealth management division, at least a leading share of it, and then ultimately over time, they bought it outright from Citi. And so it was about, you know, any parent company, Morgan Stanley included. There are lots of different divisions. Wealth management was just one of those divisions. And I think throughout my career I’ve seen that the sort of top investment firms make strategic decisions around which business they want to be leading with. And so Morgan Stanley was clearly making a statement that wealth management was where they wanted to put their investment.

And they, in that joint sort of venture acquisition, they created a really significant stake in the wealth management business.

Scott Rutherford
So you mentioned managing the change in the before, during and after phases. So where did you start with in the before in this instance?

Nina Hollon
Well, in the before I was the head of field training for Smith Barney and that was a series of events. And my career started in what we would call the field or in the branches, in the client facing kind of offices. And that’s where I really got my start in that business. So I worked with a team of financial advisors supporting them and then I worked in management and then I got involved in training at the local level. Right. Our regional and divisional level.

And really understanding that that was kind of where my passion was. But I already knew the business pretty deeply at that point. So there was a natural transition from working and training in the field and in our local offices and then to coming back into corporate into that head of training role.

And that move was largely precipitated by Smith Barney anticipating they were going to go through a significant platform change which would require significant training. So we were sort of sleeves rolled up working on that effort. When the joint venture with Morgan Stanley was announced and all eyes and all efforts turned towards that.

And in a situation like that, in many cases there’s sort of two of everybody.

And the first year of that joint venture, we needed the two of everybody because it became an all hands kind of on deck effort to start the side by side analysis.

The ultimate goal was to create the target operating model in every way, platform, procedure, process. And so it was a year at least worth of comparing side by side what was the best of the best. Did we have it in one side or the other, or did we need to build it or did we need to buy it? And so being part of that, part of the process, that analysis really early on was critical because it infused all of our training efforts subsequently. We understood the decision making process. We understood that before the history people had with these, with these resources and I can’t just stress enough how important, you can’t just walk in at the moment of change, create training, understanding that history and that legacy is really, really critical to infuse in the training.

Scott Rutherford
We talk a lot in learning and development about the need to couple the learning solution to the business problem and have that strategic alignment as you’re describing, this notion of selecting the best of the best from both sides or creating new, that has to be driven then by some pretty candid conversations internally.

Nina Hollon
It does. And I think that lends itself really to one of the biggest lessons learned that I’ve carried with me and that’s part of my current business and it’s transparency. And that extends from the very first one of those side by side meetings all the way through to the actual execution of the change.

It does require some difficult conversations.

Yeah, it’s true, it really is. That is the point, I think, where the chaos starts, right?

Scott Rutherford
Well, in the chaos, and I don’t necessarily want to put words in your mouth, but I have in my own timeline been through acquisitions and periods of change. And one of the challenges is managing of course, the people directly involved in making the change happen. Because as you say, you have two of everything, which presumably is going to be at some point whittled down to one of everything.

And so what can happen is folks are both tasked with doing the job, but also perhaps looking over their shoulder saying, well, what’s going to happen to me at the end of the day? Am I still going to be here?

Nina Hollon
True. And lucky for me, like yourself, most people have had some kind of experience like this where their business or company organization has gone through change. So very relatable.

And to your point, There then is another lesson that we’ve kind of taken into account, and that is many companies through this process lose their objectivity for reasons such as you described. And so the ability to come in and work with companies and maintain that objectivity is pretty critical.

But it’s also, there is a bit of chaos. There is a lot of fear, There is a lot of unknown and lack of communication. Not on purpose, but because it’s just not known yet. It’s not known what we can communicate. So that’s really what builds that kind of chaotic feel and that anxiety and the negative aspects. So that also all becomes part of the pre managing through that change, right?

Scott Rutherford
Yeah. And I was looking through some of the materials and you shared with me some of the materials for your transformation toolkit, which included a statistic which I’d like to explore a little bit. It basically says half of all mergers fail due to inadequate integration and inadequate training. When you consider the multimillions of dollars involved in a merger, that’s a stunning number. Half fail.

If I were making a bet on a game in Vegas, I’m not sure if I’d like those odds either.

We’re talking about these huge deals failing due to lack of training. That’s equally shocking and profound.

Nina Hollon
It is. That’s a statistic from the Harvard Business Review.

And if I elongated that their statistic, they fail. And I think it’s from an internal perspective, right. Not an external perspective, but internally. And it’s lack of cultural integration and training.

And those really are inherently connected.

You know, when I took on the merger with Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley, a fairly senior person said, look, Nina, this is not the kind of thing you get an A on. You either get a C or you get an F.

And so often that is the mindset. And so it’s because they realize I think, how difficult it is to go from A to B in a situation like that.

But when you’ve figured out some of those lessons and you can infuse them in your approach, you really have a good shot at getting that A internally.

Scott Rutherford
And I think as I was thinking about this topic too, and I don’t want to get too far off track because I want to talk more about the during and the after with that Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley experience more. But as you were talking about the market pressure and you mentioned this being cyclical, I feel like, and we’re recording this in late 2024, we’re five years, give or take, into another transformative cultural and economic change. The COVID and post-COVID years, which in their own way have caused businesses to have to respond and respond again and respond again almost on, I want to say annual basis, but I think that’s understating the fact. So when we talk about change to a business, I think we’re talking about lessons learned in a merger and acquisition. But it doesn’t have to be through that sort of transaction. It can be crisis, market pressures, you name it, right?

Nina Hollon
Absolutely. I think it speaks to two things, and you said it. One is anticipating. And someone who’s leading the strategy for training in an organization needs to be anticipating changes and imagining how to align to what may be coming. I think that the second part of that is the idea of transaction versus transformation. Too often if you’re not anticipating, your training is a reactive event to something that’s maybe already happened, and in a sort of rush and lack of other kind of strategic perspective, your training becomes transactional.

It is skill based or point and click or something to that effect. And so when the change kind of peaks and starts to settle, that hasn’t really become integrated with how a person does their job. You need your training to be more transformational. And there’s a lot of things that have to happen in order for that to happen. But that tends to be a common mistake is training is often delivered in such a way that it is just transactional. Learn this and then go back to doing your job, which in the context of a company culture shift or a process shift. The risk in that transactional training is, well, if you tell folks now, go back to doing your job, some of them will go back to doing their job the way they were.

Scott Rutherford
And nothing really changed in the end.

Nina Hollon
And you’re right. That’s where the culture comes back into it. And so culture is tricky in any kind of business transformation because everybody’s going to react slightly differently or need something different to really kind of understand again or reintegrate the culture in the way that makes sense to them.

But your training is all changes need to be infused with whatever the culture is. And often I see that with change. Companies have a beginning culture. A change factor has happened and they think they will just somehow get back to that beginning culture state, when in fact it’s chemistry. Right. You have been changed. That old culture is no longer there. You can’t help but have impact from whatever change is happening. To your point, such as Covid or working remotely in that whole process. We all companies were forever changed after that. So there actually needs to be a brand new culture regardless and again, to your point that that can be difficult conversations for senior leadership to have, but also just to formulate and then translate. And so wherever you have the opportunity to integrate that new culture, that new why are we here? Why do we do what we do? Why do we do it the way we do it? How do I talk to clients about why I’m with this new company or why the company went through this change? Helping them understand the new value proposition and why they’re even in the seat is as important as how to do their jobs.

Scott Rutherford
So what we’re talking about then is kind of reinforcement. So that’s kind of. And that sounds to me like the middle of the arc, the during.

But how do you, I guess, how long does that take? Do you say in broad strokes and can that ever be done with this? How do you transition from a middle to the after with the lens of, well, any change needs reinforcement? So how do you scope that? How do you approach that?

Nina Hollon
I think you start by looking at the practicality of the change. What is changing? Is it platform, technology, Is it process or procedure?

Is it practice? Sort of how we do our jobs? Not technically, but how do we interact and sort of be part of this company? So you look at the scope of the change through that lens is what areas is it touching?

You connect with your key stakeholders, like your human resources and talent management partners. What’s changing for people in that space? You need to understand in a merger and acquisition, all your benefits may change, all your company perks, all the things you’ve come to rely on. So we really want to understand the whole sphere of what’s changing for the employee, typically, because when you’re the trainer, there may be a lot of things changing for an employee, but the only person that’s likely to be standing next to that employee in the end is the trainer or their local kind of peers. So the trainer becomes the face of the change that’s happening in the organization. Whether it’s something they’re actually training you on or not, they’re the face of the change. So to your question, I think it is a, it is a continuum, but it starts with, I would say, readiness, helping people define for themselves how ready they are for the change, which involves early communication, some transparency around what actually is changing, but something like a self assessment where you say, how well prepared do you think you are for X, Y or Z?

And that has a lot to do also with engagement. Because from that point on, if they have self assessed, for example, and said, I’m really strong here, I’m not strong here and I’m completely unsure about this area. They are then invested in whatever solutions you bring to them in a way that it’s almost as if they asked for that because they said I’m not strong in this area and I’m not sure about this area. And so when you then say, well, here’s the solution to that, they’re already part of the equation. So engaged employees are critical to. I mean, I hear a lot of people talk about adoption, but if you don’t have engagement, you won’t have adoption.

Scott Rutherford
You mentioned communication and I wonder if there’s a role for training here that is as the sort of connector between management and the employee population. Because one level is you have to be obviously listening and responding to the leadership of the business and creating programs that support that change, which is being managed and being led. But on the other side you mentioned the trainer is the face of the change to the employee. So to me that says, well, they’re in a position to hear concerns and to enumerate those back up the chain of command. If you look at it that way, how does that happen in practice?

If that does happen in the way I’m envisioning it, that sounds like it could be a very empowering role for the trainer to be able to be the voice and the advocate for the workforce.

Nina Hollon
Right. I think you’re absolutely right. It is at least a two way communication opportunity in my experience. And something that we created during that Smith Barney Morgan Stanley joint venture was something that has evolved quite a bit in my practice now. But at that time it was what we called the Pulse Report.

And so we had at the peak 500 trainers who were out in the field working with our advisors, our support teams, our managers to train them on what they needed to know. And they were training, they were with them for months in advance of the change event and then for some time after.

And so they were on the ground every day talking to people, getting reactions to the change, letting them, helping them work in the, in the demo environment, you know, the sort of practice and learn and hearing the pain points, all of that, but also just understanding the sense of receptivity to what was happening around them, what their clients might be saying. So the Pulse Report simply became an email end of the day that each trainer would send in to our managers and they would say, here’s a sense of what happened in the branch today. It’s the pulse of the office. What’s good, what’s bad, what they’re worried about what they really liked, what’s resonating any flavor.

And we would simply list each of the locations and each trainer’s pulse for the day. And that was something that I shared with senior management as a way to connect the two. We were the bridge in that sense.

And that became, I wasn’t allowed to stop that pulse report for many years because it became such a critical connection point to your point for leadership to understand what’s really happening at the employee level. So something like that, and I’ve continued to use that in my change training, but something like that is critically important.

Scott Rutherford
So moving into the work that you’re doing now based on all of your experience and learnings along the way, I wanted to just talk to you about this transformation toolkit and the approach that you take when working with new businesses.

So talk me through how you like to be brought in and what approach you take to support a company that’s raised their hands and say, okay, we’re going through some, some level of change event and we need a little help.

Nina Hollon
So again, to me, it is a merger or an acquisition is something easily identifiable. A potential client can definitely see themselves in that problem statement, if that’s what’s happening. But it is also really any kind of change that’s happening in their business because in the end, those are all the same type of training event.

So my role with a company is to come in and really be that strategic advisor, someone that can look at the scope and the impact of what’s happening, the type of training that’s going to need to be developed and delivered, the employee base, the sort of demographics, the physical aspects of it, how are we, what are our options for delivering?

And then what is the existing state that we need to reintegrate with when the big change part is over, or else that in and of itself is just transactional and disruptive. So, you know, my role is to come in and I look at it in three phases.

The first phase is the inventory, where you’re looking at the current state. Who are the stakeholders, what’s the change involved, what you know, what needs to happen, how do we define success?

And you’re really taking inventory of the existing problem and the existing infrastructure.

And what comes out of that is a strategic training roadmap. And that includes all phases. Change management readiness, leadership preparation, the actual design and delivery, the execution, the adoption. That whole roadmap is comprehensive.

The second phase is the implementation. So you’re designing, delivering the training you’re doing, all the change management you’re doing the preparation for leadership, you’re assessing readiness, you’re testing knowledge in that phase.

That’s kind of the big, the big part of the timeline and the third phase is the adoption and really where you reintegrate the learning and make sure that it is transformational, not transactional. So there’s adoption, there’s measurement, there’s reporting, but there’s also that transition back to the internal team and the internal organization and making sure your onboarding programs, for example, are infused with whatever change has just happened.

Scott Rutherford
So you’re bringing things all the sort of bringing that thread all the way through because you want to set them up to be successful in the long term once you and your team exit.

Nina Hollon
Right. But also recognize they are changed, they’re forever changed through whatever this transition is. And so their kind of business as usual state also has to have reflected some of those change aspects.

Scott Rutherford
So in your experience, I wanted to ask you because not everybody listening or watching this conversation is going to be in a Fortune 1000 organization. Many organizations are quite a bit smaller and we have, I know a lot of folks in L&D are a one person department and wear many hats. I hear that a lot.

So for someone who’s perhaps in that situation where they feel like they have to do it all solo and their company is going through some sort of acute change event, whatever it may be, what sort of advice would you give to someone who’s in that sort of scenario where they feel like, you know, they’re maybe a little swamped and you know, I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to paint anyone who’s desperate. But if you feel like you have a larger job than the resources you have available to you, it’s not a great feeling. So is there something we can learn from you on that?

Nina Hollon
It’s a great question. And I’ve been in that position myself too. So I think the best advice I would give is to look at the really tangible aspects that need to happen. What’s point A and what’s point B?

And then what’s the largest common denominator? What am I going to get the most out of if I create, is it an online course? Is it reference material?

And also take into account what’s worked for your company in the past, what has been successful, what has not been like, try to avoid throwaway work. Try to avoid work that may seem like it’s appropriate but doesn’t fit your culture. It’s not how people learn in your environment. So have a Solid understanding of the problem statement and what you’re trying to accomplish. But also think about those, maybe this more the softer pieces.

For example, if I could only do one training medium to bring somebody through a change, and maybe it’s an online course, I would absolutely make sure I started with some kind of readiness assessment. So I engaged them. Then the courses, the training, it is what it is. But I would also make sure I had something on the other end that is the knowledge check, that is the reinforcing. Did I really learn what I think I just learned? And that sort of peace on that other end is. That is the part that builds confidence, which is critical when a person’s going through change.

I don’t know if I really learned what I think I just learned. So put it into practice for me. Help me understand if I really did learn it, and help me figure out how to talk to my clients about what’s changing. So I have to. I have to give them back that confidence that they know what they’re doing, they know how to do their job.

Because what that does for the success of the change is it creates continuity. The client doesn’t maybe even feel any disruption because the person, the employee, has the confidence that they learned what they needed to learn. So I guess what I’m saying is there’s the obvious piece, which is the training in the middle, but the thing before, the readiness, the engagement, and the thing after which is that integration and that re instilling of confidence. Those are maybe the most important pieces. And they’re less obvious. Right. They’re less tactical.

Scott Rutherford
So before we finish, I wanted to ask you a little bit through the lens of measurement and outcomes, we talk about spending effort on the scoping of the project.

How have you found you’re able to communicate back to senior leadership on the success and outcomes of the change arc? What are those reports or metrics look like? What does that story look like when you’re sort of looking back over the course of a project? Hopefully more than a C grade. To use your analogy earlier, what does that report look like?

Nina Hollon
That’s a great question. One of the really important things I learned about that is it is not the training department’s job to figure out the success measure.

It is the stakeholders working with the training group defining the competency that you’re looking for.

So if you say, for example, we’re going to introduce banking into brokerage, which was a real thing that happened in the early 2000s, it’s not the training department’s job to say this is What I think this looks like as success, these are the goals we should have from the training. This is what should happen. On the other end, it is the group that’s integrating banking to say to me, an advisor’s competency would look like this. And there’s a spectrum. One is, I don’t know anything about being able to talk to my clients about these products. The other end of the spectrum is I’m an expert and I’m actively having these conversations with my clients. So as a team, you work with the stakeholders to say, what level of competency on this spectrum are we going for? And what we’re going for may be a three. That may be, I know the product, I know how to talk about it. I’m comfortable having those conversations. Not an expert, but I’m also not nowhere.

Scott Rutherford
Right.

Nina Hollon
So together you’re defining. So then you can say, okay, then for the training piece of that, I now know my target state, I now know what success looks like to them. And before you leave the table in that conversation, by the way, you say, what data exists that we can use to measure that? Is it their local branch manager saying, I see them holding more meetings about this than they used to? That’s qualitative, that’s observable. That’s great. Are there also metrics and data happening on the back end where you’re seeing more types of accounts being opened, more of those products being integrated into portfolios? So you. And again, the stakeholders are the experts there. What data do you have to know your business is happening the way you want it to. So that would be the most important thing. I think I made that mistake early in my career thinking I had to figure all of that out, to figure out the goals of the training. But that’s part of that first phase of inventory. That’s where you’re getting alignment on goals, you’re getting definition of competency and what the target state is then I think learning and development professionals are really good at designing content and delivery. That gets you to that. Whatever that target state is, that’s where their expertise comes in. But it’s not up to them to come up with it to begin with.

Right? And I think that’s really powerful when you’re building that relationship of trust with your stakeholder early on, building that around a shared understanding of, okay, exactly what does success look like and how do we measure it so there are no surprises later on in the process. 

And to your point, the trust aspect, then the stakeholders are also engaged. I mean, I don’t know how many times I’ve said engaged during our conversation…

Scott Rutherford
That’s an important word.

Nina Hollon
Well, it is, because in a chaotic period of change, it’s easy for people to sort of feel like they’re not part of it, they’re not part of the equation, or I want to wait and see how successful they are with this. And it obviously, the more people that are engaged, the better.

Scott Rutherford
All right, well, Nina Hollon, I will put a link to your website on the episode page for this episode so folks can reach out to you if they want to chat more about your expertise and what you do. But Nina Hollon, I’ve really enjoyed having you here on the podcast. Thanks for being here.

Nina Hollon
Thank you so much, Scott. It’s been a real pleasure. I think, you know, when you get excited about talking about your work, you’re on the right track.

Scott Rutherford
Absolutely. Thanks again.

Nina Hollon
Thank you.

Scott Rutherford
This has been the AXIOM Insights Learning and Development podcast. This podcast is a production of AXIOM Learning Solutions. AXIOM is a learning and development services firm with a network of learning professionals in the US and worldwide, supporting L&D teams with learning staff augmentation and project support for instructional design, content management, content creation, and more, including training, delivery and facilitation, both in person and virtually. To learn more about how AXIOM can help you and your team achieve your learning goals, visit axiomlearningsolutions.com and thanks again for listening to the AXIOM Insights podcast.