Last Updated on November 13, 2025 by Fly High Coaching
Culture change is a crucial element for any organization aiming for long-term success. In this episode, Porschia and Michael Lopez discuss how a strong company culture impacts performance, often more than strategy alone.
You will learn how leaders can guide their teams through culture change, particularly during challenges like layoffs or reorganizations. Michael stresses the importance of aligning behaviors with new organizational goals to foster transformation.
Michael also talks about the timeline for culture change, noting that it may take up to a year to become self-sustaining. Consistent leadership involvement and a focus on behaviors are key to making culture change lasting.
Michael Lopez is a best-selling author, transformation consultant, and sought-after speaker. With a background in business, military, and athletics, he helps organizations implement behavior-driven strategies for culture change.
What you’ll learn:
- How culture change drives organizational success to impact retention, decision speed, safety, and results
- The role of leadership in guiding culture shifts and how leaders acknowledge change, co-create language, model behaviors, and resource daily coaching.
- The typical timeline for instituting a culture change, and what factors affect how long it takes
- Why focusing on behaviors is key to transformation because repeated habits compound into performance without chasing short-term metrics.
- How to align team culture with new organizational goals for improved trust, decision-making, accountability, and speed through clear roles and ownership.
As a thank you for listening to this episode of the Career 101 Podcast, we are sharing our FREE master class – Career 911: Solving the Top 5 Challenges Executives and Professionals Have! It’s a training based on solving the common problems our clients have experienced to reach their goals. You can get access to the master class here!
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
Porschia: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Portia Parker Griffin, and I wanna welcome you to the Career 1 0 1 Podcast, a place for ambitious professionals and seasoned executives who want an edge in their career. We’re talking about all of the things you were never taught or told when it comes to career growth, development, and change.
Now let’s get into it.
Today we are talking about culture change in organizations with Michael Lopez. Bestselling author sought after speaker and transformation consultant, Michael Lopez’s. Purpose is to unlock your full potential by helping you rethink your approach to change as a student of the human industry, Michael uses his experience in and passion for the science and practice of behavior change to design innovative change strategies.
He brings a diverse leadership [00:01:00] style forged from a blend of business, civil service, military, and athletic experience, which he uses to accelerate performance for leaders and teams. Prior to forming Michael J. Lopez Consulting, Michael worked at Profit Brand Strategy. He also spent time as a managing director at both KPMG and ey after 13 years with Booze Allen Hamilton.
He began his career as an intelligence officer in the US intelligence community. Michael earned his MBA from George Mason University and his BA from Occidental College. Hi Michael, how are you today?
Michael: Hello? Hello. I’m doing well. Thanks for having me.
Porschia: We are excited to have you with us to discuss culture change in organizations, but first we wanna know a little more about you.
So tell me about a 7-year-old Michael.
Michael: Yeah. 7-year-old Michael was a pretty precocious kid. I have a, [00:02:00] an 11 month old daughter right now, and my mom reminds me. She is all energy. She is all fire, she is all passion. She is all movement. And as my mom describes you, or even worse than that, talking about me in terms of I am, I’ve always been that little kid that asked why why not? A funny story is when they first asked me what I wanted to be in life, most. Little boys at that time set a fireman or, these sorts of things. I liked the guy at the Safeway store who cut up all the meat, so I wanted to be a butcher.
Yeah, my mom was concerned. I was always a little bit outside the norm I think, and I’ve stayed that way ever since. Yeah, I’ve pretty much been that way my whole life.
Porschia: So Michael, tell us about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
Michael: I’ve just been so lucky in so many ways, surrounded by great leaders, great teams big moments, big failures, big mistakes. I think in many [00:03:00] ways the mistakes probably in do shape us more than the successes because we learn so much. I. About ourselves in those moments. I was you mentioned my time in the intelligence community.
I I spent time as an intelligence officer working for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff during the war in Kosovo. And, got to see war firsthand. And a lot of things I think have reminded me in my day job when people are upset or they’re stressed or we’re worried about a process or a technology.
It’s gonna be okay. Nobody’s being shot at today. And I think just putting it in perspective of understanding what we’re really here doing and, what matters. And certainly the power of teams. I think, I come from a world of athletics working in the military where teams are central and understanding what makes a good team.
There’s just so many micro moments that, that, that were pivotal for me. But I do remember one moment in the middle of the war, I think it was the second day, and I’m down there, I’m a 25-year-old, kind of nobody, right? Just raise [00:04:00] my hand to do a job that nobody else wanted to do, quite honestly.
And they called me upstairs and they said, Hey, they wanna talk to you. And my job was to help pick targets. And so the planes would take off, we’d tell them where to go and what to shoot at and all this stuff. And. I walk upstairs and it’s several three and two and three Star generals and admirals, sitting senators, house of representative members, chiefs of staff of the Air Force and 25-year-old me.
And I sat down at the end of that table and they said, tell me what happened today. And I just remember a, being terrified also being incredibly focused but reminding myself that if I can do that, I can do anything. And I would say that. What a great leadership lesson for me. I’m the age now that many of those people were 50 something year old leaders to give a 25-year-old young person the grace and the opportunity to share their expertise, their insight.
Just such a humbling moment for me that it reminded me that my responsibility is not to always have the best. But to have the right questions. And [00:05:00] it, I could go on with many more, but for me, that was probably the single most formative professional experience I’ve had in my life.
Porschia: Wow. It’s, I think it goes back to your point about, putting things into perspective.
And because you have. Diverse experience. I think you are, the perfect consultant to help people do that. Michael you have a very interesting background. We’ve talked about some of it already, I think a little bit. What motivated you to start your own business? I.
Michael: Sometimes it’s interesting I grew up in very humble beginnings and so I always had this belief that you grow up, you get a really good job that job pays you well, and you’re set and you just keep doing that thing.
And, see previous comment about me being a bit of a rogue, even as a kid. I was never quite satisfied with everything. There was always an itch in me to do more. And I don’t mean more as in better. I really mean more as in lean into part of my [00:06:00] persona. That was always a bit of a challenger.
Even more than a bit. I’ve always been a challenger. And I found at those big companies, all great places, all incredible experiences, opportunities, a lot of life lessons. I always pushed the organization in ways that, they didn’t really ask me to. They asked me to do that for clients, but not for them.
It’s always found that there was a tension in my internal brand in my style. And so that sometimes that worked really well. Sometimes it didn’t. I’ve made some big mistakes in there and, maybe we can talk about some of those, but so that’s one thing I always felt like I didn’t quite fit in number one.
Number two, I think, I was always a bit afraid of going out on my own. I. And the last company I was with, I learned pretty quickly it wasn’t the right fit for me. And I’ll thank my wife till the end of time. Actually two people, my wife and my head coach from my days in football.
She said, now’s the time, you’ve been trying to build something and the only way to do it is to build it [00:07:00] on your own. And so letting go of that fear was really important. But I built it because I found that. I was trying to help companies change and the way that. It got done in those big companies it’s very difficult for me to do the work.
I am a practitioner. I’m, I wanna be in the meetings, I wanna be in the conversations. I wanna be in the tough moments. And the economics of that structure just didn’t allow me to do that. So I. You you mix all these things together, right? Having a brand and a style that was always a bit of a maverick understanding that I needed to create an economic model that really was suited for myself and for my clients and getting out from under this fear that I had that, that I wouldn’t be successful.
And my head coach said to me one of the best. Pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten in my life. And if you have entrepreneurs watching this show and people who are starting their career, he said to me, you still have a job. It’s just different. And it, that [00:08:00] was an incredibly transformative moment for me.
And I finally realized if I can be good over there with the safety of this big company, I can be good on my own. And it was, it’s one of the best decisions I ever made.
Porschia: I love it. I love everything that you said, Michael. And we do have entrepreneurs that listen to the show. We actually have a whole entrepreneurship series, so I definitely ask that question.
I’d say about 25% of our individual clients are either entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial. And mindset. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So we’ve talked about company culture on the podcast before in episode 71. Before we dig in too deep today, I wanna know what is your definition of company culture?
Michael: Yeah, it company culture is how we treat. Each other in the process of delivering on [00:09:00] strategy. Strategy is what we do and a bit of how we do it operationally, but for me, culture is the fabric of our relationships. How we treat each other in the process of doing the work that we do. And I’ve just seen so many times, I have a client right now, and we had to take some big steps back because Peter Drucker said very famously culture eats strategy for breakfast.
And it’s, one of the most famous comments of all time. And the wisdom of that comment is that the goal is not enough. This idea that the ends justify the means it only works so long. And great cultures, we’ve seen them, we’ve all been a part of them.
Bad cultures, we’ve all seen them, we’ve all been a part of them. You don’t show up every day because of a compelling strategy. You show up every day because of a compelling culture. And so for me it all starts with that.
Porschia: Wow. Showing up every day for a compelling culture. I think that is so [00:10:00] true. And it leads into the next question I had for you.
Can you tell me a little bit more about why you think company culture is important?
Michael: I think we’re seeing it in real time unfold before our eyes. And I think when you look at the great success story companies even look at the tech industry right now, which I think, was I.
Back in the two thousands the darlings of corporate culture, right? They had they got it all right. They had all the right benefits, all the right experiences, all the right opportunities, all of the right relationships and upside and pay and benefits. What’s happened as those companies have just become big companies is those things have started to peel away.
And that doesn’t mean that just having foosball tables makes things better. That’s, it’s, that’s, that’s the easy button but. Every company is gonna go through tough moments. And if you don’t have a culture that can withstand those kinds of tough moments [00:11:00] you’re gonna really struggle.
And if you look at the tech industry, I’m just using them as an example. Every industry’s gone through this cycle. You go through layoffs, you go through those experiences, and what happens to the people that remain right? They look left and right and go, am I next? And the minute that happens, you feel an erosion in the experience of your relationships, in your sense of safety.
And I don’t mean safety in the kind of cliched way that we use it. Just understanding, do I have some sense of what’s coming next? And so those things affect performance and I see it every day, right? I coach athletes and if an athlete is in the middle of a play and they’re uncertain.
If they can’t trust the people to their left and right, if they don’t know where they fit, you hesitate. And when you hesitate, bad things happen, right? And so business is no different. And so culture doesn’t give people absolute safety or guarantees, but it helps them understand where they fit.
Who they can [00:12:00] rely on and what we’re chasing, right? And when people have that, they’ll do amazing things, but without it, hesitation kicks in. And so it, for me, culture is everything.
Porschia: I wanna follow up on that, Michael, because you’re absolutely right. Nowadays we hear about constant change, right?
And it could be in response to economic industry and or leadership changes, right? Within organizations and, that can lead to reorganizations, downsizing, and layoffs. How do these types of events affect a culture change within a company?
Michael: Every situation’s a little bit different.
But I think, the biggest, and maybe to put it into some categories, one of the first ways that it affects it is there’s this shift in the collective consciousness of the organization of who we used to be versus who we are now. And now that doesn’t always have to. Trend towards the negative.
I’ve worked with some clients where who we used to be [00:13:00] wasn’t great, and who we are now is really inspiring and compelling and full of opportunity. But there is this sense that when these big shifts occur. Again, I’m not suggesting that layoffs aren’t a normal thing. They happen all the time.
It’s part of business and it’s unfortunate, but it is part of the way businesses operate, right? And there’s a million other, we get sold, we buy things, we, our companies don’t perform well. There’s a million reasons why shifts happen, but there’s this sense of identity change. Within the organization and so that, that is a first big shift that people go through.
I think with that identity shift, there’s a second thing, which is I. I, I have a sense of who I am in this culture, and I have a relationship to that sense of identity. And so if that shifts, then the next question is, okay, who am I in this place that I used to have a sense of familiarity around?
Who am I and what happens next? And then, maybe at the more [00:14:00] practical level. The question is, what do I do? So if we’ve just gone through a layoff and I we’re down 5,000 people I’m gonna pick up more work, right? Or maybe my roles changed. And so this question of what do I do next, right?
That can trigger a lot of uncertainty for people. So these are the kind of practical things that we talk about. And I spend a lot of time with leaders helping them understand, look, I get it. We’ve got a. Cut off part of the business or do whatever. I just want you to understand the experience of real people who show up to work tomorrow, who don’t make as much money as you, who don’t have the same sense of certainty as you and what they’re dealing with.
And those are real things, right? They’re very real experiences for those people.
Porschia: Yes. I definitely agree and I love how you talked about. Not only the organization, but the individuals, right? So on the organizational level, it’s who we used to be versus who we are. And then when you get down to the [00:15:00] individual level, that sense of identity throughout the change that employees might have.
So I love that. And I think. I think I told you this earlier, Michael, but I know some of our listeners know that I have a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology, so I’m a nerd, but I like, really digging into these organizational topics, but also looking at, the team level and the individual level.
So I love that you pointed that out. In your opinion, Michael, what do you think are some of the core aspects of a culture change?
Michael: I think the first part is acknowledging that we’re different in some ways, right? That change has occurred. I think a lot of times we get into situations where a leadership team in, I think, with good intention might be trying to send a message that.
Nothing’s gonna be different. Nothing’s gonna impact you. And I think a lot of times, again, I’m not, I’m I don’t wanna lead, launch into cynicism. I think it comes from a [00:16:00] good place trying to all alive fears, trying to help people feel that it’s gonna be okay. And so I think it’s important to acknowledge that things have changed.
Circumstances have changed, the environment’s changed and to be open about that, I think, people, and it’s like kids, right? Kids are good observers. They’re not always great interpreters and people are the same way, right? We see things happening and what we’ll do is fill the spaces potentially with information that we don’t have, right?
And so I think first of all, it’s important to acknowledge. What’s changed that something has changed. I think the second thing to acknowledge is that in that change, there might be some behaviors that don’t serve us anymore. And to be open about that. I spend a lot of time with my clients helping them understand.
What they might be doing that served them five, six years ago. But given the change in circumstances, that behavior is a weakness now, right? It might’ve been a strength before. Every strength is a weakness in the right circumstance. And so we’ve gotta be able to identify [00:17:00] that. I have a client right now that we’re just getting started with, and he said something to me it’s an energy company and we’re getting ready to kick something off and he said, my leadership team’s been in place for 10 years.
They’re very good at the job they need to do today. I need them to do the job that’s coming tomorrow. And so it’s important to understand what sort of, what’s changed. And so I think the third thing then is to be very intentional about the words we choose to describe what we’re moving towards.
And I guess that’s a kind of a three. A three B would be that those words come from the team, not from me. My job is not to tell you what your culture is. My job is to help you create a space and an experience for you to uncover and define and give a language to the what you want your culture to be.
Because if I choose the words for you, you can just blame it on me. When you choose the words, it’s something that we all arrived [00:18:00] at together, right? We know that we own what we create, right? And there’s a real attachment to this idea that if I play a role in the definition of something that I.
Participate in, I’m much more attached to it than if I’m handed it. And being intentional about who we’re becoming, but giving people a voice in that journey, that’s where I build my relationship with the culture that’s coming. And that’s where I spend my time is helping create that journey for people to go on so that, the best culture is the one where you’re in a meeting somewhere and somebody turns and goes, Hey, we don’t do that here anymore.
If you wanna know what a good culture is, you can measure everything in the world. If you’ve ever been in a meeting and that’s happened, you have a good culture, right? So that’s the pieces that I would focus on.
Porschia: I love how you broke that down, because I would say in my years as a consultant and a coach, I’ve seen many executives and professionals struggle with the idea of a culture [00:19:00] change.
And I think that part of it is because the concept of a culture change can seem, overwhelming, scary, and then just really abstract. Yeah. To a lot of people. I like to ask about, first steps and. From what you said, it sounds like a first step for leaders going through a culture change would be just acknowledging that things are different.
The Career 1 0 1 Podcast is brought to you by Fly High Coaching, where we help our clients soar to their full potential executives and leaders are setting out to achieve their company goals, but without the right support. It can be difficult, if not impossible. Employee performance, productivity, and company culture all affect organizational revenue and profits.
We offer customized consulting, coaching, and training solutions and can serve as your external talent [00:20:00] development partner. Check us out on our website, fly hi coaching com.
Michael: Yeah. We I see this a lot with founders and startup companies, right? I had a client many years ago that they were 5,000 people, and yet they still operated like a startup. I’m like, you’re not a startup. You’re 5,000 people. We need to have governance. We need to have decision rights, right?
And they resisted if we do that, we’re not gonna be innovative and nimble. Okay? Do you know what innovative and Nimble has left with you? Uncertainty. Crowdsourcing. Everyone works on the same stuff. There’s things that are getting missed because people aren’t focusing on it. And so you’ve changed, the business has changed, and you need to acknowledge that and label what’s needed and still find a way to hold on to the attributes of being flexible and nimble, but understand that the circumstances require you to be different and you have to change.
And so it’s just a great example of this [00:21:00] idea that what got you here isn’t. Really gonna maybe get you there. And I say this to my clients all the time. Your culture will form itself whether you attend to it or not. You might as well be intentional about what you want because you might not like the answer if you don’t.
And so that’s our job as leaders. And I think our job as leaders starts with creating culture and it’s all about that.
Porschia: I agree. So from your perspective what are some of the biggest mistakes that you have seen executives make when it comes to culture change?
Michael: Yeah, I think in those three things that I described there’s a little bit of an implied, not doing that is a mistake.
But I think there’s some broader. Philosophical things that are big mistakes. And the first and most important is thinking that it’s not important. If you think that your culture doesn’t matter you’re wrong. And I don’t mean to say that other things aren’t important too.
It just means that this is a big [00:22:00] piece. I, I think that’s the first and most important. Part of it. I think the second mistake is thinking that it’s soft. That performance doesn’t lead or that culture doesn’t lead to performance. It absolutely leads to performance. Look at the. The New England Patriots in their 20 year run over one of the, the greatest, look at the Yankees, look at these organizations where they have a standard, they have a method, they have a culture, right?
They have an expectation. And when some of the key components of those organizations move on and they haven’t replicated that culture, what happens? It falls apart. Not that the Yankees have fallen apart, but the Patriots certainly fell on hard times, right? Yeah. If you think it doesn’t matter.
And you think it’s soft and it won’t lead to outcomes. Again, with all due respect, Mr. And Miss CEO, you’re wrong. And and then I think the third thing that’s maybe a big mistake is that thinking it doesn’t require resources. Because you can’t always draw a bright line between an action today and a culture change [00:23:00] in a week or a month doesn’t mean that there’s not a line connecting those things.
And so I think a lot of times, because we can’t always monetize the ROI, at least in the short term. We can’t always find that silver bullet. It tends to give way to people that really focus on those kind of KPIs of outcomes, right? And for me the KPIs of culture are stories. They’re moments, right?
They’re experiences that your employees tell when their eyes light up and they go do something above and beyond. Again, you don’t do that because you’re trying to hit. Financial metric. I’ll tell a little story. I’m not gonna out the client ’cause I don’t want them to get mad at me.
Wonderful people, big organization, they’re in the healthcare space and we’re working on their first ever set of enterprise corporate values. They’ve been purchased up, they’ve bought a lot of companies and they’ve evolved as an enterprise over time. 80,000 people all doing different things, but [00:24:00] little pockets of these, maybe five or six kind of separate companies.
They’re all good places. They’re all doing good work. They’re all doing good things. And the CEO said in one of our sessions, can we have a corporate value that says hitting your financial targets? And I said, no, you can’t. We can create a value around accountability. We can create a value around personal responsibility.
We can create a value around showing up for others and meeting our commitments. The minute you put something in there about meeting your financial targets, anything you say after that is gone. It doesn’t matter, right? But you’ve gotta understand the second order effects of culture, right? And so those are the kind of things that we spend time helping people unwrap, right?
The desire for perfect clarity and bright lines and KPIs and clear ROIs. There’s just there’s just an acknowledgement that it doesn’t always work that way. [00:25:00]
Porschia: Very well said, Michael. I’m sure you know you come across this, but I come across this all the time specifically in like the sales conversation and if we are talking to a client about an organizational assessment, which on our end usually involves digging into culture and some people get it.
Some people don’t and drawing that connection for people so that they understand the value of culture. Yeah. Is fun, I will say. And yeah. For me, taking a psychological approach to it. I look at, what they think is important and see if we can tie that into culture so it’s meaningful for them.
But yes, I think a lot of people think it’s like fluffy HR handholding kind of stuff.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. No, we, one of the things that, one of the most proud moments of my career I did some work that same energy company at a nuclear power station in southwestern Mississippi, 800 people. One of the lowest performing [00:26:00] stations in the us There’s about a hundred stations in the us.
They were like 92. We did a four month pilot to change the culture of the organization, and then they carried on for another six months or so on their own, and they went from ranked number 92 to ranked in the top 10%. When we showed up they have these 16 metrics they use to rank performance.
They only had, one of them were green, 15 of them were yellow. By the time we were done, 15 of them were green. 10 were green for the first time in the history of the station, and at not one point in that journey that we designed did I tell them to go hit those metrics. What we did was identify five behaviors that were holding them back from outstanding performance.
We redesigned the culture in alignment with those preferred five behaviors, and we practiced those behaviors and they learned. How to, how to delegate better, how [00:27:00] to plan better, how to coach better, how to guide, and all of those things laddered up to better performance at the end of 12 months, a nuclear power station.
Every couple years they shut the reactor off. They take out all the old nuclear fuel and they put new fuel in. It’s very complicated, very costly. Every day you’re not on, you’re losing money. We save them $60 million. The process of doing that if you, and if you don’t think culture matters, they had tried before to hit their outage times. I think the last time it was almost 200% longer than their planned duration. And they hit under 30 days for the first time in 30 years. And never once did we tell them that’s the goal, right? The goal was. Change the culture and let performance follow.
So there are stories and there are metrics. You just have to understand that there’s a time duration problem that you need to work through when you’re working on that.
Porschia: And I wanna follow up on that time duration because I’m sure Michael, that there [00:28:00] are some people listening and they think, wow this sounds great.
Michael, you’ve really helped some of these organizations, but how long do you think it takes for just the average culture change to happen? I know it’s gonna be different, based on the industry, the size of the organization. Yeah. But if someone just wants a ballpark so that they can, really have a frame of reference.
Michael: Yeah. I think a year is about an appropriate window to expect it to become fully embedded in a way that starts to affect performance. I think within six months it can be self-sustaining. My job always when I work with clients is the first goal is to identify what needs to change in the culture.
The second goal is to make it self-sustaining. Meaning that I have enough people in that organization that have adopted these beliefs and behaviors in a way that they can start to replicate it throughout others in the organization. In the case of that nuclear power station, we had a 50 [00:29:00] person team. And we had a goal of if every person affects three other people in the next two weeks, that’s 150.
And then if those people do another three people, that’s, whatever it is, four 50. And we keep going and keep going. And so that’s the sort of second, I think within about six months. Depending on the organization, you can get to a place where it becomes self-directing, self-sustaining, and then, based on the number of people, it’s gonna take a little bit more time. But again, if you’re looking for the easy button, keep looking and, yeah. Look, this is a behavior change, right? And so think about your own life, right? Think about. The goals that we set to change our behavior and change our habits, right? We measure these timelines in months, not in days, right?
And so these are human beings that need to learn something new. They need to experiment with something new. They need to fail at something new. They need to bounce back and try it again. [00:30:00] And, you, that’s a non-linear experience for every individual. One of the reasons I, one of my big.
Beefs with the consulting world. I’ll say this ’cause I’ve done it. So is, change at scale is not a thing, right? Change is a highly personalized. Individualized experience. And so this idea that we can all watch the same 30 minute video and somehow be magically different at the same rate on the other side, it’s just not true.
And so you’ve gotta understand that culture change is a ground game, right? It’s the same conversation a hundred times, it’s the same meeting 50 times, it’s the same coaching conversation a hundred times, right? And so that it’s, it takes as long as those experiences can happen.
Porschia: Very well said. Very well said. Michael, tell us more about your business.
Michael: We’ve been talking about it really in between these cases. I, I, I help individuals, teams, and organizations transform and, I just, [00:31:00] I have been on the receiving end of. Too many failed strategies to help create change.
One of the things I talk about in my book, the moment that the light bulb went off for me as a recipient of some of these strategies, and I had been delivering them for years, and, you asked me why did I start my own company? We’d been doing the same thing in the world of organizational change management for years, and yet.
Depending on the stat you look at, right? 70% of all transformations fail and I just couldn’t resolve those. Why are we doing the same stuff all the time? And my, my business, my practice is a very hands-on, a very high touch, very engaged consulting model. Like I said I’m in the meetings, I’m in the moments, I’m in the conversations.
I facilitated a nine hour session with one of my clients over three days on how do we make better decisions? And we went line by line through 150 different decisions and worked through who was gonna do what to whom. And I was in there okay, we got that one, you got that one, you [00:32:00] got this one, right?
We’re, that’s what it takes is to be at that level, right? This isn’t about PowerPoint slides and those sorts of things. It’s about real people in real moments. And I do about. Four to six of these kind of engagements every year. They run from four months to six months, depending on kind of what we’re doing.
And, because I want the results to last. And so that’s how I’ve built my own economic model. And that’s where I spend my time. I do a lot of speaking I also do a lot of keynotes and that sort of thing. And then of course I have my book which has been out for a couple months, and that’s going really well.
And I’m in the early stages of starting another one. My first book was about individuals. It’s really about the science of what happens to us at the microscopic level when we try to change. And the next one will be about organizations. So some of the case studies we’ve talked about, how do I use these strategies to change groups and large organizations?
Porschia: Love it. We will be providing a link to your website and your other social [00:33:00] channels in our show notes so people can find you online. But now Michael, I wanna ask you our final question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
Michael: This is gonna sound cliched, but I think I’ll add more to it, is, find the thing that scares you the most and go do it. There is real science behind. Our willingness to do hard things. There’s a part of our brain called the anterior mid cingulate cortex, which when you do hard things actually gets bigger.
People who live longer have a bigger brain region in this area. Athletes have a bigger brain region in this area. And I would say that one of the best things I’ve ever done in my career was raise my hand for the most difficult job that nobody else wanted to do. A for the reasons of doing hard things, but even if you fail, whatever that may be characterized as people will respect you for being willing to raise your hand.
And so I [00:34:00] think getting an edge is all about your ability to put yourself into uncomfortable but necessary situations. And learn from those and embrace those moments. It’s I think we hear a lot about, certainly there’s skills and AI and things you have to learn. I. Learning change is a skill.
Change is a skill. You can learn how to change and apply it to anything in your life, and so the more you lean into that, I think the better off we all are.
Porschia: Michael, you have shared a lot of wisdom and insights with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident with their culture change initiatives.
We appreciate you being with us.
Michael: Thank you. I have I’ve had a great time and I can’t wait to have you on my show,
Porschia: This episode was brought to you by the Brave Bird Career Alliance, the go-to membership designed for seasoned executives and ambitious [00:35:00] professionals with everything you need for career planning, strategy, training, and support. Thank you again for listening to the Career 1 0 1 podcast. I hope you have at least one key takeaway that you.
Can use in your own career. If you enjoyed hanging out with us, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Until next time, here’s to your success.
