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In 2010, Phil Gilbert was a longtime startup entrepreneur when IBM acquired the software company he ran. The slower, process-oriented culture was a struggle for someone who was used to the faster pace of startup life, he writes in his new book, Irrestible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success. When IBM tapped him to lead a transformation of the company, it was a daunting task. Over the next few years, Gilbert guided IBMs shift toward design-thinking and re-trained thousands of employees to work differently, all without mandating a thing. Today, he sees corporate mandates as pointless: They dont work, he says. And yet, theyre ubiquitoustake the RTO mandates that companies are enforcing, often to the frustration of their employees. At Paramount, about 600 workers took a voluntary buyout rather than accept the companys 5-day RTO mandate. But change is inevitable, whether its about remote work or AI integration. So how do companies get employees on board? Gilbert, now a leading culture change expert, spoke with Fast Company about the lessons he learned from his undertaking at IBM and what company leaders should know about getting employee buy-in for their own change initiatives. Were in a time when companies are undergoing and implementing lots of changes, from RTO to AI to DEIall the acronyms. In your book, you talk about the importance of treating change like a product. What do you mean by that? My predisposition, based on years of experience, is that mandating changes in the workplace is hugely inefficient and hugely ineffective. Cultures drive outcomes. Mandating culture changes to achieve different outcomes doesn’t work. [At IBM], I had to start thinking, Okay, if those two things are true, how do I change a culture without mandating it? And it hit me that this is very much the same problem that any startup faces: bringing a new product to market. You have a new solution to a problem, and nobody knows who you are. It struck me that what I was really doing was constructing a new product for the marketplace that was IBM. I had to make this product so desirable that the teams would choose to adopt it. And in doing so, they would work better together and deliver better outcomes. That was an aha moment of, Oh, I’ve done this before. I know how to build products, I know how to deliver products. If you’re thinking about introducing this [change] as a product, you have to understand that a product is bigger than a technology. A product is much more holistic than just a single tool. We have to name it. We have to put the brand values into it. You have to prove value. RTO is something so many companies are struggling with. You talk about making change desirable, but what advice do you have for leaders when the change they want to implement is getting pushback? I’m telling leaders today, If you are getting pushback from people returning to the office, don’t think it’s on themit’s on you. If you introduce something that people reject after giving it a try, there’s one of two reasons: The first one is that it’s not actually a good idea. The second one, which is more common, is that it’s not a bad idea, but you have not executed it very well. I’m a big believer in people being at the office, but not for the reason most leaders are saying today. I’ve come across company after company where the CEO will say, Get back to the office because collaboration is better. And then when you get to the office, you find out that three-quarters of your team is not even in that location. Collaboration is actually happening very well over Zoom and Teams and Webex. Its all the other stuff that makes up a persons career and a persons wisdom, the collaborations that are not happening via Zoom, [that were missing]. Those are the experiences we should be majoring on in our physical spaces, and they should be apparently valuable. Thats what irresistible change is all about. Its about reversing the ownership of noncompliance. In the old model, noncompliance was a failure of the employee: They dont get it. Im going to start looking at the badge readers every day and find out who badged in and who badged out and when they did it. Thats the old model, and it engenders resentment from day one. The irresistible change model says, If folks arent coming back to the office and staying willingly, why is that? And what can I do to make that environment so valuable to them that they want to be there? What surprised you most during the transformation at IBM? I believed in this thing called the frozen middle. I thought middle management was resistant to changethat had been my experience. So when I designed the program, [I thought], Ive got to keep the very top engagedthat meant our CEO, her directs, and their directs. And I have to keep the workers at the edge very engaged. Theyre the canaries in the coal mine. My assumption was that we would get to the middle over time. A couple years into the program, [our] research showed that middle managers did not resist change. In fact, they were almost as rabid about change as the people at the edge, the earlier-career people. But middle managers do the hardest job in the business. They’re the translators. They’ve got to translate the high-level strategy and communications to the very senior people. And they’ve got to rationalize the chaos of what’s going on on the ground. This role of translation is very hard, and we had just made it exponentially harder because we introduced new teams under their purview that were operating in radically different ways from their old teams. We hadn’t given them the tools to manage teams that were using these new practices. Once we acknowledged that and gave them the tools, their ability to manage these teams was greatly expanded. That was a huge accelerant. Had we had that at the beginning, we would have shaved at least a year, if not two, off the program. If people could take one lesson from your book, what would you want that to be? The first question I ask every CEO when I’m approachedunfortunately, I’m not approached as often as I’d like to be before the transformation starts; I’m typically approached after it’s failedis, Tell me about the teams youve put through the program. And almost always, I hear something like this: Oh, our best people. We pulled them off their projects. A tiger team. Getting those first teams correct is a huge part of winning or losing. These are not cherry-picked employees. These are teams that are funded to do what theyre going to do, whether you transform them or not. These are not innovation teams in some cool office in San Francisco with bricks and exposed ductwork and VW buses sticking out of the wall. These are teams in your mainstream businesswhoever is on them. Virtually everybody gets that wrong.
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E-Commerce
When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published a request for information for private-sector contractors to launch a round-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will be paid to comb through Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc., turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICEs databases. The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch. I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies, and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning, if logical, next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital. A new structure of surveillance ICE already searches social media using a service called SocialNet that monitors most major online platforms. The agency has also contracted with Zignal Labs for its AI-powered social media monitoring system. The Customs and Border Protection agency also searches social media posts on the devices of some travelers at ports of entry, and the U.S. State Department reviews social media posts when foreigners seek visas to enter the United States. ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies already search social media. What would change isnt only the scale of monitoring but its structure. Instead of government agents gathering evidence case by case, ICE is building a public-private surveillance loop that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence. Private contractors would be tasked with scraping publicly available data to collecting messages, including posts and other media and data. The contractors would be able to correlate those findings with data in commercial datasets from brokers such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR along with government-owned databases. Analysts would be required to produce dossiers for ICE field offices within tight deadlinessometimes just 30 minutes for a high-priority case. Those files dont exist in isolation. They feed directly into Palantir Technologiess Investigative Case Management system, the digital backbone of modern immigration enforcement. There, this social media data would join a growing web of license plate scans, utility records, property data, and biometrics, creating what is effectively a searchable portrait of a persons life. Who gets caught in the net? Officially, ICE says its data collection would focus on people who are already linked to ongoing cases or potential threats. In practice, the net is far wider. The danger here is that when one person is flagged, their friends, relatives, fellow organizers, or any of their acquaintances can also become subjects of scrutiny. Previous contracts for facial recognition tools and location tracking have shown how easily these systems expand beyond their original scope. What starts as enforcement can turn into surveillance of entire communities. What ICE says and what history shows ICE frames the project as modernization: a way to identify a targets location by identifying aliases and detecting patterns that traditional methods might miss. Planning documents say contractors cannot create fake profiles and must store all analysis on ICE servers. But history suggests these kinds of guardrails often fail. Investigations have revealed how informal data-sharing between local police and federal agents allowed ICE to access systems it wasnt authorized to use. The agency has repeatedly purchased massive datasets from brokers to sidestep warrant requirements. And despite a White House freeze on spyware procurement, ICE quietly revived a contract with Paragons Graphite tool, software reportedly capable of infiltrating encrypted apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. Meanwhile, ICEs vendor ecosystem keeps expanding: Clearview AI for face matching, ShadowDragons SocialNet for mapping networks, Babel Streets location history service Locate X, and LexisNexis for looking up people. ICE is also purchasing tools from surveillance firm PenLink that combine location data with social media data. Together, these platforms make continuous, automated monitoring not only possible but routine. ICE is purchasing an AI tool that correlates peoples locations with their social media posts. Lessons from abroad The U.S. isnt alone in government monitoring of social media. In the U.K., a new police unit tasked with scanning online discussions about immigration and civil unrest has drawn criticism for blurring the line between public safety and political policing. Across the globe, spyware scandals have shown how lawful access tools that were initially justified for counterterrorism were later used against journalists and activists. Once these systems exist, mission creep, also known as function creep, becomes the rule rather than the exception. The social cost of being watched Around-the-clock surveillance doesnt just gather informationit also changes behavior. Research found that visits to Wikipedia articles on terrorism dropped sharply immediately after revelations about the National Security Agencys global surveillance in June 2013. For immigrants and activists, the stakes are higher. A post about a protest or a joke can be reinterpreted as intelligence. Knowing that federal contractors may be watching in real time encourages self-censorship and discourages civic participation. In this environment, the digital selfan identity composed of biometric markers, algorithmic classifications, risk scores, and digital tracesbecomes a risk that follows you across platforms and databases. Whats new and why it matters now What is genuinely new is the privatization of interpretation. ICE isnt just collecting more data, it is outsourcing judgment to private contractors. Private analysts, aided by artificial intelligence, are likely to decide what online behavior signals danger and what doesnt. That decision-making happens rapidly and across large numbers of people, for the most part beyond public oversight. At the same time, the consolidation of data means social media content can now sit beside location and biometric information inside Palantirs hub. Enforcement increasingly happens through data correlations, raising questions about due process. ICEs request for information is likely to evolve into a full procurement contract within months, and recent litigation from the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the Department of Homeland Security suggests that the oversight is likely to lag far behind the technology. ICEs plan to maintain permanent watch floorsopen indoor spaces equipped with video and computer monitors, that are staffed 24 hours a da, 365 days a yearsignals that this likely isnt a temporary experiment and instead is a new operational norm. What accountability looks like Transparency starts with public disclosure of the algorithms and scoring systems ICE uses. Advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that law enforcement agencies should meet the same warrant standards online that they do in physical spaces. The Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU argue that there should be independent oversight of surveillance systems for accuracy and bias. And several U.S. senators have introduced legislation to limit bulk purchases from data brokers. Without checks like these, I believe that the boundary between border control and everyday life is likely to keep dissolving. As the digital border expands, it risks ensnaring anyone whose online presence becomes legible to the system. Nicole M. Bennett is a PhD candidate in geography and the assistant director at the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Below, co-authors Suzy Burke, Rhett Power, and Ryan Berman share five key insights from their new book, Headamentals: How Leaders Can Crack Negative Self-Talk. Suzy, president and co-founder of the leadership consultancy Accountability Inc., is an organizational psychologist and seasoned executive with an exceptional track record in a diverse array of businesses, from a Fortune 20 technology company to a highly successful beverage start-up. She is also a National Institute of Mental Health scholar and member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches Agency. Rhett is the CEO and co-founder of Accountability Inc. and was named the #1 Thought Leader on Entrepreneurship by Thinkers360. He is also a Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coach. His expertise has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, and on CNBC. Ryan is the founder of Courageous and host of the Courageous Podcast. For over 25 years, Ryan has helped corporations who are stuck, scared, or stale to choose courage. He has counseled many companies, including Google, Procter & Gamble, Kelloggs, Kraft Heinz, LA Galaxy, and Snapchat, to name a few. Whats the big idea? Leaders arent failing because they dont have a strategy or skill. They are stuck because of their internal battlestheir self-talknot because of the challenges happening with customers or in the market. Headamentals is about directing that inner voice so that it becomes a competitive advantage and helps you build great teams. Once you fix that conversation in your head, you fix how you lead, connect, and perform. Leading others starts with self-leadership. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Suzy, Rhett, and Ryanbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Self-talk is the hidden saboteur of leadership Weve always had societal-scale worry wars, but we like to refer to the pandemic as Worry War I. Now we are in Worry War II, which confronts the rising cost of food, the emergence of AI, the erosion of empathy at work, and political division. If Worry War I was the pandemic, fueled by isolation and fears of illness, then Worry War II is pandemonium. It is all these forcespushing us, nudging us, spiraling us outand each of us is dealing with it in our own way. Layer on top of that the things we told ourselves as kids, what our parents mightve said, which have stuck in our minds. You start to see why were spiraling and where our self-talk comes from. Think of that voice inside your head: Where does yours come from? That voice triggers how you show up in different situations. Sometimes a self-talk spiral is triggered by whats happening in the world right now, like when you try to watch the news. Or other times, even as an older adult, your self-talk can spiral when something reminds you of a challenging experience or feeling from your childhood. Self-talk, unbeknownst to those around you, can spiral out of control and become a hidden force holding back yourself and your teams. 2. Every leader has a monster The hardest part of being a leader isnt the market pressure. Its not the late nights, the impossible deadlines, or even your fiercest competitor. The hardest part is the voice in your head that makes you rewrite an email at midnight because of how it might land, pause before you speak (even when youre the expert in the room), and turns every compliment into a question mark. This voice is the one that whispers, or sometimes roars, that you dont belong. That voice doesnt just shape your day, it shapes everything. It determines whether you share your thoughts in that high-stakes meeting or let the moment pass; whether you inspire confidence or let doubt leak into the room; whether your team feels a calm, steady presence or the weight of uncertainty. It shapes the culture your team breathes every single day. What gets celebrated, what gets overlooked, and what never gets said out loud. Your self-talk becomes team talk. If you want a team thats bold, resilient, and innovative, it doesnt start with your strategy. It doesnt start with your offsite. It starts with a conversation happening in your headthats your monster. And almost every leader has one. What matters is whether this voice is left in charge, because when your monster speaks, your team listens. Your self-talk becomes team talk. According to the National Science Foundation, we have up to 60,000 thoughts a day: 80 percent of them are negative, and 95 percent are repetitive. Thats 48,000 mental reruns of doubt every single day. Given that reality, it is no surprise that most of us wrestle with imposter syndrome: 62 percent worldwide, 71 percent in the U.S. If youre a high achiever, that percentage is even greater. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds in history, once confessed that he felt like an involuntary swindler. The man who reshaped our understanding of the universe worried that he was faking it. Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice, has also admitted to feeling like a fraud. She once said in a speech, Im always looking over my shoulder, wondering if I measure up. And Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks, admits that very few people get into the CEO seat and truly believe they belong. If Einstein can doubt his brain, Sotomayor can doubt her success, and Schultz can doubt his right to the corner office, then self-doubt isnt a glitch. Its the default. Your monster doesnt care about your resume, titles, or trophies. 3. Your mindset isnt fixed Your mindset is programmable, and you are the programmer. To program it, its important to understand why were plagued by our monsters in the first place. The answer is evolution. Our brains are wired for survival, not growth. Our brains default mode fixates on past threats to help us avoid future danger. If you were laughed at for speaking up in class, your brain filed that away so that now, when youre thinking about speaking up in a meeting, that same voice might whisper dont. If your first boss pounced on every small slip, your inner critic learned that imperfection equals incompetence. Years later, it still sounds the alarm. Dont try to ignore your monster. Conventional wisdom says to cast your inner critic as a bully and either ignore, suppress, or conquer it. But our monsters are trying to protect us, not destroy us. The moment you step outside of whats familiargiving tough feedback, launching a bold idea, taking on a new roleyou invite risk and vulnerability. Thats when your monster pipes up, saying, What if you fail? But staying safe trades impact for comfort and progress for predictability. The irony is that true psychological safety doesnt come fom avoiding risks, but rather from knowing that you can take them and still be okay. Dont try to ignore your monster. Get curious about it. The 3-C Maverick Method as a tool for reframing negative self-talk in real time: Catch, Confront, Change. When you think about something, it shapes how you feel about it, which in turn shapes how you act. When you recreate the story you tell yourself, you change the outcome. If you see setbacks as invitations to grow, then feedback stops feeling like criticism and begins building confidence. Thats the power of changing the conversation in your head. You often cant control what happens to you, but you can control how you think about it and respond. This is the essence of cognitive reframing and our antidote to negative self-talk, and the cornerstone of our three-step method: Catch yourself when your mind is saying youre not smart or tough enough to succeed. Your emotions are an alarm system. Anxiety is often the first indicator that the monster is moving in. Tune in, identify the counterproductive thought. Confront that thought. Challenge your monster with facts that prove it wrong. Change the narrative by reframing the story your monster is telling you. 4. There is more than one type of monster Sports coaches say you practice 95 percent of the time for the 5 percent of the time that you actually play. In business, it is almost entirely the opposite. Think about how long the orientation phase is as a company: youre given an hour of orientation to find out where youre supposed to go, and then practice is over. But we need more practice, specifically for retraining the brain to have stronger tools for dealing with self-talk. There are five monster archetypes holding us back that we need to practice dealing with. We call these cognitive distortions CAMOS, because they camouflage or conceal your truth: Catastrophizer assumes the worst will happen, even if it probably wont. Always Righter needs to be right, no matter what. Mind Reader tries to tell you what youre thinking, before you even know what that is. Over-generalizer takes one bad thing and paints everything with it. Should-er lives by unrealistic should and musts, creating unnecessary pressure. 5. Self-talk can be your leadership plutonium All leaders eventually discover that self-talk is their most powerful, volatile energy source. It can fuel extraordinary growth or cause quiet, invisible damage. Every day, theres a voice running in your headevaluating, judging, predicting, doubting, encouragingand it never stops. As a leader or founder, that voice becomes the unseen soundtrack for your company. We tend to think of our thoughts as private, but theyre not. They leak out in our body language, decisions, energy, and how we communicate. When a founder walks into a room and hes full of stress, teams dont just hear it; they feel it. If your self-talk is full of fear, your team starts to operate out of fear. If your self-talk is reactive, your team becomes reactive. But if your self-talk is grounded in belief and clarity, then your team learns to respond the same way. You cant create a calm, confident, accountable team if youre running around with a chaotic inner dialogue. Culture starts with what you say to yourself in those private moments before the big decision, before the investor pitch, or before the tough conversation. Leaders who have built billion-dollar companies share the quality of disciplined thinking. They dont let the wrong stories take root. They challenge their own narratives and are intentional about what they say to themselves because they know it shapes how they show up for everyone else. Plutonium, like the power of self-talk, can power cities or destroy them. The teams that are winning are not just on the same page strategically, but are also on the same page emotionally and mentally. Theyve built shared language and a rhythm of confidence and clarity that amplifies everyones performance. That alignment is leadership plutonium. When your self-talk and your teams talk are synced, youve created an unstoppable force. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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