Breaking the Perfectionist Mindset: Embracing Change in Business

Mo Fathelbab: Welcome to today's episode of People and Strategy. I'm your host, Mo Fathelbab, president of International Facilitators Organization. Okay, people in Strategy is a podcast from the SHRM Executive Network, the premier network of executives in the field of human resources.

Each week we bring you in-depth conversations with the country's top HR executives and thought leaders. For today's conversation, I'm excited to be joined by Andy Billiau, chief. Transformation officer at SHRM. Welcome, Andy Mo. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Great to have you with us.

I'm excited to hear your story. And, let's start out with how you became an executive in the field of transformation.

Andy Biladeau: Yeah, sometimes, it surprises me a little bit too. it's interesting with this title of Chief Transformation Officer, the number one question I get is, well, what do you do?

What does that mean? What's transforming. and it's interesting 'cause it's actually been a result of a lot of the jobs and roles and companies that I've worked at over the course of my career to get to this point. I started my career management consulting and so my goal when I started my career was to get exposure to as many business problems as possible as quickly as possible.

and where was that? I was at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Got it. So I started at PW C as a management consultant. And it was really intentional around the type of work that I wanted to do. Mo when you talk about management consulting, that can mean a lot of different things. I was very much interested in the human capital component of it.

I actually started my career as a high school English teacher of all things. Okay. So I've always been really passionate about education and upskilling, and when I found this opportunity at PWC to do corporate learning, it was really a merry of my passion and something I wanted to get good at, and a skill that I wanted to build.

and so when I was at pwc, my primary focus was on the human capital component of transformation. So the clients I worked with, while they were doing a lot of process transformation and implementing new technologies, my role was really around the change management component. How do we bring people along the journey of adopting new mindsets, adopting these new processes, adopting these new technologies?

and you just get to learn a world where. All these investments are being made on the technological front, but the value can't be realized or captured unless the people are truly prepared to embrace it and adopt it and put it to use. and so I think it was a really good exposure for me to understand, yes, there are all the business components to it, but if we don't acknowledge it, companies are really human enterprises.

We're not getting the full picture and seeing 

Mo Fathelbab: the whole board. So. I love, all this, and, I'm all about people and transformation as well. So here's, my question. How do you get people to, to change? 

Andy Biladeau: It's a great question. I fundamentally believe that you have to come to it with a perspective of people are going to change in their own time and their own ways, and it's your role as a leader to model what that change looks like.

In the sense that you are also a work in progress, right? Realizing that there is no finish line, there's no destination of, you'll ultimately have this figured out, and every Tumblr will click into place and it'll all fit cleanly. No, it doesn't happen. I wish that it would, but I think it's really modeling that type of behavior, mo asking questions, seeking to understand.

Helping people get their resistance out or their concerns out, and being in a place where they can actually ask those questions so that you, they become open to now understanding how what you are trying to communicate or share with them fits into their mental model or their approach. So I think number one, it's listening.

It's where is this person coming from? Where are they at in their journey? What's important to that individual? And then being able to scale that out to how do you do that for teams and functions and ultimately the entirety of the organization. But I think it really starts with, again, seeking to understand and a desire to learn and a curiosity, that's really at the heart of the beginning of 

Mo Fathelbab: change.

So there's, this author that I love, Carol Dweck. Ooh. And she talks about fixed mindset versus, flexible mindset. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm wondering if the fixed mindset gets in the way in that regard, if people aren't willing to change, and whether some of them just don't come along when there's transformation.

Andy Biladeau: Yeah, I've done some reading around, having an abundance mindset versus scarcity mindset. big fan of the work that, Saachi Nadella and Kathleen Hogan have done at Microsoft to really drive a learning culture and, encouraging people to be learn it alls versus know-it-alls. I love that. I think when it comes to this idea of an abundance mindset or, not getting into concrete thinking, it really starts with the ability to demonstrate to others that you can change your mind and actually verbalizing that change in your own mind in front of people can be incredibly powerful. I'll give you an example. Within even our executive team meetings within SHRM, the ability for us to say, I came into the room with this perspective or this point of view, I've heard from my colleagues and peers, their experiences, they've weighed in with their expertise.

I actually feel differently than I did 20 minutes ago and being okay with that, and that's actually a step forward as opposed to an affront on your lack of thought prior or your limited understanding of something. that's not the goal, which is to come in and prove how right you are. The goal is to come into a room as a team and understand what are the collective perspectives on this topic, and how do we come to consensus on a decision and move forward.

And the dialogue and how you get there is just as important as where you land, in terms of a decision. I truly believe it because when you know that you are open to hearing alternative ideas, it's gonna bring out of you all of the richness that you bring to bear. Versus if you don't feel like there's a space to be able to share those perspectives, you're not gonna speak up in those moments where maybe you could have been the differentiator between moving left and we should have moved.

Right. So I think we try to establish that culture at the leadership level within SHRM. And then what that ultimately does is signals to the organization that's what's important and what we value and the culture at SHRM. And then that cascades down through the rest of the organization and that leads to better decision making.

It does. It really does. And I think that when you get out of this idea that being right is the most important thing, or you being right is the most important thing, I think it opens you up to a world of possibility. that again allows space for new ideas to surface. we talk a lot about inclusion and I think really one area where we're striving to be better and move forward in terms of inclusion is being open to all of those different perspectives and ideas and not being judgemental of the person or, making a, an assessment of that individual for bringing something forward, but saying this is a new data point that we should consider and think about.

And if we decide to discard it, that's okay. But there's value in having the conversation 

Mo Fathelbab: when there's new data. 

Andy Biladeau: Hopefully that changes some of the decisions a little bit. Absolutely, and I think it's the reality that I'm a recovering perfectionist. I would love for everything to work, perfectly and for it all to seamlessly integrate.

But the reality is that friction is part of the process, and you have to embrace some of that friction. And some of that friction comes from you're going to have to make decisions with incomplete data sets. and I think that's where having years of experience and intuition really come into play of trusting your colleagues and peers who have had different experiences to get them to that point and trusting that their experience might tell you something that you haven't seen before.

that's really where I think those connections are made. I love that. So I wanna go back to 

Mo Fathelbab: this perfectionism thing, this recovering bit that I'm working on myself. Thank you. so, what is the downside of perfectionism? 

Andy Biladeau: I think it can really limit the options that you consider, right? If you feel like there is only a narrow path to success and that there's only one way to get there, I think it's going to limit your ability to see alternative perspectives in a way, and it's gonna push you towards needing it to be perfect, versus recognizing that you actually have the flexibility and room for error, and it's okay to make mistakes and fail, and there's actually a lot of power that comes from those mistakes and failure.

I've like any other leader or individual or human being, right, experienced failure and setback, and I think the perfectionist in me would tell you that shouldn't have been part of the plan. But then in hindsight, you can connect the dots in reverse and say, that was a really critical defining moment for me and I learned something out of that I can take forward.

And I never would've gotten that experience if I had been married to perfectionism. 

Mo Fathelbab: And in pursuit of perfectionism, we also may not make decisions as quickly. 

Andy Biladeau: Yeah, I think so. In terms of you want everything to be there, so you feel like you've contained all the variables and you've isolated all the variables, and you look at it in a very formulaic fashion.

And I think decision making at this level is far more complex than that. And as much as it as you need to be a systems thinker and understand how the decision over in this department is gonna affect the team, three teams over, that's important to see those connections and dependencies. You also have to appreciate that there isn't, there's no such thing as a perfect decision because your environmental or external factors are gonna continue changing.

And so there's a, good decision in the moment that you make it. And I like to say that it's very easy to judge decisions from the past, but you have to remind yourself. That individual or that team was operating with good intention. They were doing the best with the data they had in that moment. And now it's your job to evolve that moving forward and figure out where there's new data or new experiences that have to be taken into account.

Mo Fathelbab: I love that. I love that. I, saw, GW Bush speak once and similar message, he said I was criticized, about the war. Yeah, but you know what? We made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time. That's exactly right. it's 

Andy Biladeau: interesting, I've actually studied failure to some extent, right?

I'm, always fascinated with, the military does this very well. When something goes wrong, their first instinct is not, let's cover that up and let's move on. What they do is an after action report and they bring everybody together and they decompose what happened, and they try to understand how did we get to this point?

What decisions were made, how do we build this into the process going forward? if you look back at, Sullenberger, the, plane that landed in the Hudson. Yeah. It was so interesting to me that absolutely a tragic experience for, those who were affected in, that moment, but the aftermath of going before Congress openly and transparently, being honest about here's what happened.

Here's where the decisions that were made, here's why we made those decisions in that moment. Here's what we would've done differently. Had we had time and perspective, I think. Demonstrating that process, that learning from failure can actually lead to better outcomes is incredibly powerful. And that's why even for SHRM leaders, I openly talk about mistakes that I've made, or, Hey, I thought this two weeks ago, we've moved down that path a little bit, and now that I have more information, or I see that the true impact that I might not have accounted for, let's redirect, or let's add onto that, or let's do something differently as a result.

And it's really this iterative mindset Mo where. If I go back to my experience as a change management professional 10 years ago, it was much more operating with that perfectionist mindset of I wanna map out every individual step in communication and stakeholder engagement and training module to get somebody ready.

No longer are we in a world where you can plan from point A to point B, it's cons. The finish line is constantly moving and it will always continue to move, and you have to have this sense of. I can control what I can control in the moment that I can control it, and that's all I can account for. There are going to be external forces and factors that are going to arise that I'll need to trust myself, that I'll be ready to respond to when they come about.

but not worrying about what you can't control in the future and just focusing on what's in front of you. 

Mo Fathelbab: You talk about that in your article, I believe, and it has to do with this notion of. the way I read it. Yeah. Am I, a victim to the external circumstances or am I a master of the internal circumstances that I can control Yeah.

To deal with these changes that are coming. 

Andy Biladeau: Yeah. And what I was trying to capture with that sentiment was you can easily be paralyzed if you start to stack up all the things you have working against you or could go wrong or are potentially lurking in the dark, waiting to jump out at you. But if you can clear out the noise.

And you can isolate it down to what is it we're truly talking about? And simplify it down to a level where you understand that these are the known implications of what I'm deciding. These are, there are some unknown implications of what I'm deciding, but I want to trust myself and my team that will be ready to respond in the moment as new information or external forces change our perspective on this idea or this topic.

And. Being comfortable with you will never reach complete resolution. Right. That whatever you decide or you move forward with will inherently need to change based on the world that we're living in, based on the world that we're living. Yeah. Which is 

Mo Fathelbab: changing more and more rapidly. Absolutely. So back to transformation.

You, have been involved in two transformations at Target and pwc. Yeah. And we've touched on PWC a bit. What are some of the lessons that you've learned from those transformations? 

Andy Biladeau: Yeah, I think, Yeah, I'll lean on my experience at Target as I came in originally to lead the change management component of an operating model transformation for their stores organization.

About 2000 stores across the US 250,000 team members Target had made the decision that in around 20 17, 20 18, a lot of retail companies were moving into e-commerce and really doubling down in e-commerce. And Target stepped back and they said. While everybody's zigging, we're gonna zag uhhuh and we're gonna actually put a big bet on brick and mortar and creating an in-person experience.

but what it meant was that not only did they have to have the technology in place to do that and the processes in place to do that, they also had to have a workforce that was ready to deliver on that elevated in-person experience, which is a tremendous upskill. And so my team was brought in to look at how do we take.

Team members from being general athletes across the store. To now, if we were to break the store down into specific departments, how do we create subject matter experts? How do we elevate their guest experience skills? How do we upskill them on selling and consultative selling? how do we streamline processes to make sure that they feel like it's a welcoming experience within the store?

And again, another example of where I really found that when you look at the process, people and technology. Those are all inputs, but they have to be aligned to guiding principles of what you're trying to achieve as an organization. So in the case of Target, they aligned all of that work toward their purpose.

And really transformed into a purpose-driven organization. So their purpose statement was, we exist to bring joy to people and help them discover joy in everyday life. And that was universal enough for everyone to understand, but also specific enough for each team member within the store to say, I see how my role contributes to a guest coming in and discovering joy in my area of the store.

And the upskill then was put in context for team members. You're doing this ultimately to create joy for guests, not just to move more product. And I think having that contextual, purpose driven organization. Allowed the team to really rise to the occasion in that transformation. 

Mo Fathelbab: And I think there was, an example also in the article about technology getting in the way.

Yeah. 

Andy Biladeau: Yeah. And a lot of times when you think about technology, you'll see a demo from a solution provider or somebody will talk about the impact of a technology. It's happening constantly with ai, as I've seen many of the podcasts you've done talking to leaders about how they're embracing AI or preparing for ai.

technology will never be the complete answer, right? It will never be the panacea to all business problems. And I think an organization appreciating the value of, again, a company is truly a group of people coming together aligned to a common purpose, trying to achieve goals as a group, as a team.

What are the skills and capabilities that the organization needs, or those human beings need to embrace technology and optimize for what it can do. But at Target, what we found was no matter how much you invest in technology can never compensate for that human to human connection that people seek and they crave.

And how do you account for that in your upskilling plan? 

Mo Fathelbab: Well, first of all, thank goodness for that because AI's gonna take over and we're gonna be out of jobs. Right. No, I don't believe that. so there's always, some sort of risk when you undergo transformation. Yeah. How do you know if it's worth that risk?

Andy Biladeau: Well. There's a stat that when I was taking this role on that everybody liked to trot out before I took the roles I was consulting my mentors, 80% of transformations fail. Everybody loves 80%. Yeah. Everybody loves to cite that statistic, right? McKinsey's got some research to, to back that up. I love that statistic because to me it's what does it take to be in the 20%, not the fear of are we going to be in the 80%, but.

Bring it on. Let's bring it on you. Like a challenge. Yeah. I love hard problems. Yeah. And what does it take to be in that 20%? A lot of the experiences that I've had over my career of being on projects, frankly, that ended up in that 80%. I've learned a tremendous amount around how do you get ahead of the moments where.

There's someone on the project team or involved in the transformation who starts to see something drifting, or they start to see something moving in a direction that they know is not, either not aligned to the strategy or is gonna create challenges later on down the road. And they don't have the courage to say something, or they don't feel like they're in a place to raise their hand and express that concern.

And so a big philosophical belief for me is to create an environment where people feel that they can come into my office or reach out to me and say. I wanna call your attention to this. I wanna flag something. And it's the ability to listen, like we talked about at the beginning. Be open-minded.

Maybe that person sees something that you don't see. And I think that the ability to create that environment and give people the opportunity to share those instances where they think something might be. Going off course does two things. The first is it gives them confidence that you're willing to listen and take input from the team, and that you have the mental plasticity to change your mind, which is critical.

Two is it's going to surface things that would not have otherwise been surfaced had you not created that environment. And in so many cases, had these projects that I've been on in the past created that environment where someone saw something early, it could have been prevented. And so I just have a, fundamental belief that you give people left and right boundaries.

You tell them where you want to go, and then let's negotiate and talk about how we get there. And I have a, an idea and a roadmap, but just like Waze or Google Maps. Totally open and flexible to, we might need to make some detours along the way, and I want your input and I want your consultation about where do you think those opportunities to make a shift left or right might be in service to getting to where we ultimately want to go.

I love that collaborative, highly collaborative. I think that's, do you mind if I riff on that for a second? Please. Please. We talk so much at the leadership level about collaboration. 

And it's a buzzword and it's a great concept. Organizations just now I think are understanding the power of collaboration within their own company.

Leadership does not have all the answers, and in a lot of cases, as Mo, the best ideas come from the frontline. Yeah. And in many ways, if you create the ability for teams to work horizontally across each other, through a network of functions and teams. What you find is that it unlocks so much value to spot opportunities to work together across departments that leadership may never have seen.

'cause they're just not close enough to understand dependencies or integrations or synergies that exist within the organization. So again, very big believer in how do you set the culture around open collaborativeness, and then how do you set up the enabling processes and structures, whether that be through social channels, internally, like a Slack or a Yammer.

Where people can go out and ask questions. I'm working on this challenge or this problem. Does anybody have a different perspective on this? Has anybody done something like this before? Does anybody have data that might help me complete my picture or my mental model of what I'm actually doing? Or deciding when you open those communication channels and those, lines of visibility, I think it surfaces a lot of opportunities that could never have been spotted otherwise.

Yeah. it's what a team does, huh? Yeah. Yeah. And that. I'm a big team person. I grew up playing team sports. I've been on high performing teams. I think when you've been on a high performing team where people truly accept the value of putting the team above the individual and the value that can unlock.

And if they've experienced that for themselves, they spend the rest of their life trying to create or be on a high performing team again. And for those of us who have been fortunate enough to be on high performing teams, it's our job to create that environment and show people. The value and the possibility of what that can feel like and what that can be.

And I very much see part of my role here at SHRM as Chief Transformation Officer to bring us together as one unified team and everything that comes with that. 

Mo Fathelbab: And it's energizing it is to be part of a team like that versus a team that is not operating effectively as a team. 

Andy Biladeau: Absolutely, and I think it's, I actually learned this lesson in consulting where.

in consulting what you do is you go to a client and you have a statement of work, and there's a series of deliverables, but there's always this aspiration for consultancies to be the trusted advisor to their client, right? We talk a lot about how do you be that trusted advisor, and I would always tell young consultants that you don't actually build trust by delivering the deliverables in the SOW.

That's one part of it. You have to be really good at your job. Where you actually build trust is those moments where there's something out of scope. Or your client needs help with something that isn't in the contract and you stay up late or you take the extra meeting or you take the extra assignment to show I'm as invested in your success as you are, and how do we operate like that internally, where if you need help, Mo, I want you to feel comfortable calling me and asking for help.

Those are the moments where you truly build trust. If it's just delivering on what we've agreed to, that's very transactional versus it's those moments that are scope adjacent or just outside of scope. I think that are the, spots where you actually build that, team bond and team dynamic. I love that.

Mo Fathelbab: How have you seen the process of transformation change over the years? 

Andy Biladeau: Yeah, well we were talking about it a little bit earlier in terms of that old formulaic model where an organization is trying to go from point A to point B, and in transformation, like we were talking about, there's layers to it, right?

There's the technology layer, there's the process layer, there's the people layer. I think historically it really has been about how do we get to the finish line of transformation. And I think I used to be a long distance runner, so I very much think, in terms of starting lines of, we have to talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely. well then you'll, I think you'll appreciate this analogy, which is there is no finish line anymore. And how do you adjust your mindset to accept that and accept perpetual change and not be overwhelmed by it? And, I don't know if you've run marathons or half marathons. Yeah.

But one thing that I've seen, runners struggle with in their first marathon or half marathon is they try to run the 26th mile first. Meaning they get worried about how am I gonna feel at mile 24 or 25? And I like to tell them, you have to run the mile you're in. That's all you can control for is what you're, what's in front of you.

You'll figure it out when you get there, and you have to trust yourself that you have the tools internally to be ready when that moment comes. But you can't try to run the 25th mile first. And so when it comes to transformation, I very much am about run the mile. You're in control for the period of time that you can control for, and then build the muscle both.

Individually and as an organization to be agile enough to adapt when conditions change 

Mo Fathelbab: and conditions do change. 

Andy Biladeau: Absolutely. E Every day. 

Mo Fathelbab: Every day, every, yeah. I wanna make sure we get to this, know the power of No. and it's one of those things that I'll tell you, just my own executive coach has said to me, no.

To others as Yes. To yourself. Yeah. But I'm not sure if that's how you mean it. I'd like to unpack that with you a little bit. 

Andy Biladeau: Well, I'm definitely gonna borrow that. Okay. it's funny 'cause my, team actually gave me a button yesterday that, you push it and it says shut it down. because I'm very much, I have a mantra of we have to stay focused on our priorities.

And when I say, when, I mean when I say know the power of no is really one of the lessons I've learned and some of the transformations I've been on that were in that 80% that fail the organization, spread it to. Spread itself too thin or try to do too many things at once. And so I am a very big believer in prioritization, radical prioritization.

Let's do the fundamentals really well. Let's do what we signed up to do. And yes, conditions are gonna change and new opportunities are gonna arise, and we have to be flexible and account for those, but not at the expense of what it is we signed up for. Because I've seen transformations go sideways when you start out with one vision and one purpose and one plan, and it changes too much, and people get in the middle and forget why they're doing what they're doing.

And so a lot of times I like to say, I'm not saying no, I'm just saying not yet. That we can't do everything all at once. And if we don't get from zero to one, we're not gonna be able to get to 1.1 and 1.2 and 1.3, and iterative releases of what we're trying to do. So. I absolutely believe in clarity is kindness, and sometimes telling someone, I love that idea.

I think it's fantastic. I think there's tremendous value in it. We don't have capacity right now to take that on, or if we do, we're gonna have to have a really hard trade off conversation and make sure that we're making that choice intelligently and intentionally. And yet we can still do that later and we'll find a place to put that in the backlog or in the roadmap.

Mo Fathelbab: is there one more tip? That, somebody should consider as they're undergoing or planning to undergo transformation. 

Andy Biladeau: It's a piece of advice that, actually my dad gave me of all people, which is always forward, right? No matter what happens to you, no matter what you face along the way, adversity or setback, embracing that as a step forward, even though that's not how you might initially perceive it.

Being open to the idea that hard times can be the best times in retrospect. And so in, never in any moment never get too down. also never get too high in terms of celebrating. Just take a, circumspect approach. But in these transformations and the world of work changing that the way that it is, it's progress in its evolution forward, and you're never gonna arrive at perfection and being okay with that.

Mo Fathelbab: I love that wisdom from your dad. any other piece of advice that you were given that has shaped your, life or work the most? 

Andy Biladeau: I'll borrow one from my mom. Right. Is, we gotta give mom credit too. Oh. Actually, funnily enough, my mom's my professional hero. Oh, right. I love that. My mom actually started, she sold beepers You're, yeah.

Of an age that you would remember what a beeper is. Yes. I had a beeper. Yeah. And I watched my mom over the course of her career, really bring teams together, co-create solutions, problem solve dynamically. This was all when she was doing it with, when we didn't have the jargon to describe what she was doing.

But I think watching her in the way that she approached, her professional career taught me a lot. but one thing that she always said to me was, don't believe everything you think That you have to. Hold your convictions, be true to yourself, but also be loosely coupled with your ideas and be open to change and being proven wrong or thinking differently about things.

And I've always taken that to heart, which is don't believe everything just because it occurs to you. seek to understand, as we were talking about before. and between that and always forward, I think it, it's really shaped the way I think about transformation. 

Mo Fathelbab: Well, it's clear to me your parents have, certainly had a big impact on you being in this role here and, what a pleasure.

Thank you.

Andy Biladeau: thanks so much. 

Mo Fathelbab: Thank you. And that's where we'll end it for this episode of People and Strategy. A huge thanks to Andy Billiau for the valuable Conversation. You can follow people in Strategy podcast wherever you get your podcast. Also podcast reviews have a real impact on podcast visibility.

So if you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review to help others find the show. Finally, you could find all our episodes on our website at SHRM dot org slash podcasts. Thank you for listening and have a great day.