Frontline Innovators

Karan Froom is the Director, Business Transformation Organizational Change Management at The Clorox Company. After sitting through an orientation class at a banking job, she found a passion for teaching people. Karan sits down with host Justin Lake to talk about the issues facing frontline employees and how to overcome them.

Takeaways 

• One of the biggest challenges facing frontline workers is the lack of human connection. With being out in the field and using video calling, they rarely get to interact with others from their office.

Quote of the show

16:29  “I use the concepts that I like to think of as a funnel. So if you think about the top of the funnel being the broad concepts of the benefits of what the change is, and then as you go down the funnel, you get more specific…It's a process, I like to talk about change as being an art and a science.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karanfroom/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Trent Oelkers is the Organizational Change Management Lead at Carlisle Interconnect Technologies. He sees the gap in communication between deskless workers and those in management and aims to make that gap smaller. Trent joins host Justin Lake to talk about some of the challenges facing frontline workers and how to overcome them. 

Takeaways 

• A big struggle is how to make remote workers feel connected to the rest of the rest of the company even though they aren’t in the office. 

Quote of the show

21:10 “I think that sincerity and acknowledgement of their, you could call it a sacrifice, but at least of their work environment is very important. And so one thing I hope that at least we, as people who are spending less time away from our desks, we can acknowledge their sacrifice and try to hopefully drive safety as one of the major things.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentoelkers/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Jon Kent is the Director, Global Telematics at Yanmar. He is passionate about music and making sure that employees on the frontline are ready for any change in technology. Jon sits down with host Justin Lake to talk about how management can better prepare deskless workers for the issues of today and tomorrow.

Takeaways 

• The lack of feedback from constituents and stakeholders is one of the biggest challenges facing companies today.

Quote of the show

5:54 “A lot of companies and organizations are moving away from a product focused environment and more to a customer focused environment,  internal and external customers. And that draws out the empathy. You can't hide from the feedback of the folks that are using your application, your technologies, or, otherwise. I'm not saying long gone as the days across all companies, but certainly there's a lot less ivory towers around today than there were yesterday.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentjon/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Todd Gernady is the Senior Manager Process Improvement, Business Architecture, and Organizational Change Management at United Airlines. After he discovered his passion for consulting, Todd went on to become a Lean Six Sigma belt and used that to share his passion for making a process run smoothly. He joins host Justin Lake to talk about the issues facing frontline workers.   

Takeaways 

• Getting the right information for the frontline workers to do their job is one of the biggest challenges that they face today. 

Quote of the show

18:41 “We built a roadmap and it allowed us to remove some of those obstacles and avoid potholes down the road versus things that we would have stubbed our toe on. And reworking, I will guarantee you will often take you longer to resolve than it is to catch it in the moment. If you've ever built a Lego set with your kids, if you screwed up something on step 12 and you are on step 32, it is very painful to take those Legos apart. So you can fix that one piece and go back and do it again.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-gernady-0069831b/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Steve Acuna is the Director of Organizational Enablement at a leading healthcare insurance company..  He sees the importance of change management and how much of a positive impact it can have on a company. He sits down with host Justin Lake to talk about some of the challenges that frontline workers are facing today and how to overcome them.

Takeaways 

• Frontline workers are the case study for how change management can change the future for how we interact with employees.

Quote of the show

0:58 “I feel like frontline workers are really the case study for how change management can change the future of how we operate and how people interact with change management in general. I do believe that frontline workers are really the reflection of how change management is actually working or not working in an organization.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveacuna/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Zachary Jedamzik is the Senior Change Manager at Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. Everyday he sees the need for change management and how important it is to a company. Zachary sits down with host Justin Lake to talk about the changes that frontline workers experience and how to better prepare them for all the changes.

Takeaways 

• The biggest challenge facing the frontline workforce today is communication. They need to understand the decisions that are being made and why they are being made.

Quote of the show

6:28 “As a frontline worker or as a maker, as a person just answering the phone, nobody's really taking our opinion on What we need to do our job, to help the customer. And at the end of the day, we're your first line of defense or first line of success with a customer. And we don't have the tools that we need because nobody really asked us. And I always found that really interesting.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-jedamzik-199784b2/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Monique Jordan is the AUX Lead at First Republic Bank. She brings with her a unique perspective and compassion for making sure that frontline workers are included as part of the change in the workplace, not just experiencing the change. She joins host Eugene Signorini to talk about some of the biggest challenges that frontline employees are facing today.

Takeaways 

• At the core of digital transformation is the need to meet customers with the best way to use technology for them.

Quote of the show

2:28 “I think what's different about the deskless worker is frequently change done to them. They're not really seen as a partner in digital change. They are seen as sort of the target of change. So those people way down there at the end of the process are going to start doing this differently. And as long as we just let them know what's happening, train them, it’s going to be perfectly fine.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniqueajordan/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Samvel Lazaryev is the Senior Manager, Organizational Change Management at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He is passionate about storytelling and making sure that frontline employees are being led properly. He sits down with host Justin Lake to talk about some of the challenges facing frontline workers and how they can be overcome. 

Takeaways 

• We are going through the great resignation right now, and it’s important to see how management will adapt to this and how agile they can be.

Quote of the show:

2:10 “What's interesting to me is as we come out of this great resignation and the pandemic, how agile will leadership be in understanding what led to this and what are some fundamental changes that the leadership will do, and organizations will do how cultures change and this kind of stuff.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samvellazaryev/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Rob Malench and Rishi Vij are both Partners at Blue Star Partners. Between them they have over 38 combined years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies. They sit down with host Eugene Signorini to talk about the people side of change and how to help frontline workers better deal with the rapid pace of change.

Takeaways 

• Even during this difficult time through the pandemic, customers are still looking for more and businesses are looking to expand, and that puts more pressure on the already overloaded frontline employees.

Quote of the show

2:36 “The more that we sort of pancake and layer on, and the more that they're feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, the more that they might be distracted. How do we take that into consideration when we're managing large-scale change in an organization? And especially when we're touching those frontline desk-less workers.” 

Links

• Rob’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robmalench/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS 

Roland Prevost is currently an independent change management consultant. He recently completed a two year engagement with a global self care and pharmaceutical product manufacturing company. He sits down with host Justin Lake about the proper way to make sure change is implemented for those working deskless jobs.

Takeaways 

• The biggest challenge facing the frontline workforce today is the rapid pace of change in technology. 

Quote of the show

10:46 “You have to want to do something. Think about people who have been in careers, where they have a set of skills that they either acquire or by natural talent, and they're very good at this thing, but they don't necessarily enjoy doing it. I often think of it just in terms of willingness and ability, you may have the ability to do something, but how much do you want to, or how willing are you to do that thing? And both of those things need to be present to have a really successful organization transition.”

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rolandprevost/

Ways to Tune In:

• Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/2f4ecd92-6468-4769-b0bf-254e236510b7/FRONTLINE-INNOVATORS