Santiago (00:00)

Hi there, welcome to ProductiviTree. I’m Santi Tacoronte and I’m here to help you succeed and be happier. In each episode we’ll explore new ways to work smarter, manage your time better and grow as a person. We’ll share fresh ideas, find ways to improve and help you become your best self at work and life. Join me as we learn and grow together on ProductiviTree.

Santiago Tacoronte (00:30)

Today we’re thrilled to have Andy Bates joining us. With over two decades of operational and people management experience, he had a sudden swerve of career path into change management and technology adoption, where he has been for the past eight years. Andy has been at the forefront of guiding organizations through digital transformations. As a Microsoft service adoption specialist and change management for global giants like Mondalisa International, Andy has mastered the art of helping teams embrace new technologies.

From implementing Microsoft Teams to managing company -wide acquisitions, and these insights into the human aspects of tech adoptions are invaluable. Get ready for a fascinating discussion on why people resist new technologies and how to overcome these challenges.

Santiago Tacoronte (01:18)

Hi Andy and welcome to ProductiviTree.

Andy Bates (01:22)

Hi Santi, thanks for having us, much appreciated. How’s things?

Santiago Tacoronte (01:27)

Everything is doing great. And I’m so happy to have you here today because we have a very interesting topic for this first edition, which is adopting technology for happiness. Just this week, I was reading in the blog by Chris Bailey, a sentence, a headline that struck me. He said, why common sense isn’t common action. And he was referring to things that are popular knowledge, like you need to sleep seven or eight hours.

but still humans, we don’t do it. And then I was thinking immediately about technology, We know that most of the technology or many of the technology that is applied in the workplace or in our daily lives, it helps us, it’s good for us. But then why we resist to adopt?

Andy Bates (01:54)

Hmm.

So, well, yeah, why do we resist adoption or anything like that? Well, usually it’s change, isn’t it? It all comes down to the willingness for us to change. We’re all hotwired. Every one of us is hotwired into what we do. And I hear a really good, really clever story about your brain. Your brain actually wants to be as lazy as it…

possibly can your frontal frontal lobe of your brain is the thing that you have to think when you do something new and that’s the frontal part of your brain doing it. Anything it can chuck to the back that’s the automatic pilot, it will do it. So anything you’ve been doing for a number of times, Stephen Covey talks about habits, 21 times you have to do it according to him to create a habit. So you do it 21 times, it becomes normal.

It becomes easy to do because you don’t have to think about it. So as soon as someone comes along and tells you, you want to do it different way, you now got to think which takes energy, takes effort and can we be bothered or do we have time? Do we even have time to do that change? So yeah, that’s where I would have thought that all comes from.

Santiago Tacoronte (03:32)

So change is painful. I think you stated very clearly, Let’s go back to the need of learning new technologies, As a factor for happiness and feeling fulfilled at work. We all have heard this comment a new system? Really? Another one? How do you think adopting technology has shifted in the last few years?

because obviously we have a faster pace of technology. And how do you think it affects people’s happiness in the workplace?

Andy Bates (04:07)

Every time we change, ultimately puts a stress and a burden on us. It can be quite traumatic for some people, ultimately, any type of change. Now the ability for us to change on each topic is different. So for example, for me, technology, I can change and adapt quite easily because one of my generally quite good skills, I’d hope, because that’s the industry I’m in.

but if I was to say language is the opposite for me and language is really, really hard. Okay. So, I had to do a lots of extra work to just to get my basic English qualifications. now that effort, if you make me change that, the way I’m doing my language communication, that takes a lot of effort for me. So we’ve got to think about that with new technology. Technology is ultimately.

one skill that you’re changing. So people that are technologically focused, you’re champions if you have it, we’ll find it easier to adapt, but others in the organization might find it really hard. And you know, if you keep changing that you’re making their life very hard. so yeah, change is important, but making sure we don’t overchange or overstress areas and individuals is very important.

Santiago Tacoronte (05:27)

That’s a very interesting concept, So you’re saying that change has different shades. So for techies like you, it could be the simplest thing to do. But there might be another thing that for you is super painful to change, It’s interesting because I’ve seen this rejection to change happens in many aspects.

I want to link it with, again, happiness at work. If you push too much of change, do you think there is a fear of people that work in organizations of becoming obsolete, some sort of anxiety towards not being able to adopt change the way

Andy Bates (05:54)

Hmm.

Santiago Tacoronte (06:09)

the company, the organization, given department is asking you for?

Andy Bates (06:14)

Absolutely. So you have your fight or flight reactions and you know, if you think that this change could potentially make you lose your job, you’re going to go into that kind of response mode of fighting it or running away because you need to protect yourself. You know, it might be great for the company, but you’ve got to put yourself first really in this kind of scenario.

just, you know, something slightly bit more abstract. I worked for a rather large supermarket at one point many years ago, and, I was asked to go in and train the till staff, how to use the, the system where you could, the customers could scan their own shopping and then go to the checkout and get it verified and off they go. And my job was to go in and coach these, the till staff on how to do this. Basically.

coach the till staff to teach the customers to do their job.

Now 90 % of the till staff just were not interested whatsoever. You know, they were sent over to me by the manager and you could just tell they just weren’t interested. They weren’t going to do it. They weren’t, didn’t show any interest, didn’t want to do it and off they went. 10 % though were like, this interesting. So wait a sec. So I’m going to teach the customers to scan their own shopping. They’re going to then pay it. And then my job’s going to go from

scanning items through a checkout to now suddenly talking to customers, helping customers do things. that sounds quite nice. So what we’ve generally seen in supermarkets, actually there hasn’t been a massive drop off of labor. No one’s lost their jobs. Generally. We generally see a movement of labor and maybe they are hiring less people than they have in the past, but no one lost their jobs over this change, but the job changed.

You can see the resistance, but in reality, very few people actually wanted or embraced the change and adopted it.

Santiago Tacoronte (08:16)

I want to deep dive a little bit on the concept of fight or flight. And how do you use it as a metric to evaluate if you’re pushing too much change, too much technology, too many new tools, too many new applications? How do you work around this concept?

Andy Bates (08:19)

Hmm. Hmm.

Well, so just the general fight and flight of how you defend yourself in conflict. You’ve got the classic change curve, which is often depicted with the initial point of change. When you get presented with this is going to happen, you resist it. And that is generally, we generally see in employment in a workplace where people will fight it. They’ll either.

Ignore the emails coming through telling that change is going to happen. Just press delete. Just get rid of it. Just ignore it completely or create counter arguments and obstructions to the change to say this is never going to work. We can’t do this. And that’s the general fight area that you see the flight in employment. generally don’t see it because that would require them to leave the organization. But if we constantly change the environment, then we make people uncomfortable. Then you will get people leave because they

won’t want to deal with the change anymore. They find it highly stressful.

Santiago Tacoronte (09:37)

Let’s link this one with company culture. I’m gonna quote Peter Drucker.

Andy Bates (09:40)

Mm.

Santiago Tacoronte (09:44)

Company culture, eats strategy for breakfast. He said it, I think, around 50, 60 years ago. I don’t think there is something more right than this. You put your strategy together, your change management plan, and then it comes the company culture. How do you think this affects and what role it plays company culture in technology adoption?

Andy Bates (09:52)

Hmm.

Mm.

The technology and adoption really depends on the type of organization. So for example, if you were to work in a technology company, you’re probably going to have changed technology as a part of the company ethos, as in your organization is automatically trying to disrupt industries to make competitive advantage. So change and that disruption is important. So that’s going to probably be…

at the exact level, C level of the organization, celebrating technology change and that will drive down through the organization.

If you don’t have that backing from the exec top level and you’re fighting from the middle level, middle management of a little corporation, you’re always going to struggle with technology and adoption because mid managers can either be blockers or supporters. So depending on their personal opinion and how it fits with their agenda depends on whether or not it’s going to happen. So.

To get real change and adoption has to come from the top. That CIO needs to be there to be driving it and celebrating that change and seeing the values of it. Now that doesn’t mean that we just need to push technology just the sake of it to show that we’re changing, but it’s to make sure that we have an environment that enables the change to celebrate the change and to move forward quickly.

Santiago Tacoronte (11:45)

I like that, see many times we see, and this is something I face commonly also in my position, The need for a sponsorship to make things sink. Let’s talk individual productivity here. You, Andy, has implemented large scale 365 and other solutions many, many times.

Andy Bates (12:03)

Mm.

Santiago Tacoronte (12:13)

How do you deal with the initial deep in productivity? I need to learn something new. I don’t know how to use it. I have a lot to do. I need to finish this project. I need to do this. I need to do that. I’m going to have a deep in productivity. How do you deal with this?

Andy Bates (12:26)

Mmm.

So yeah, personal level, for myself, because of my role in technology and change management, I actually have an active interest in it. So I actually find it a fascinating thing to try and learn and sharpen my tools all the time. So constantly learning and adapting. I’m spending a lot of my time playing around a power platform right now in Microsoft, you know, playing around power to make power BI. And now I’m touching power apps and things like that. It’s good fun. Now.

Why do I do that? When do I do that? Well, I’m most productive personally, first thing in the morning. That’s when I get my things done. That’s when I eat that frog. If you’ve ever heard of that phrase before, where you do the worst thing that you could possibly think you want to do that day, you get it done the first thing in the morning. Meaning that then the rest of the day becomes easier. And by the afternoon, when I have my natural productivity dip,

And I can’t be bothered drafting another email or doing anything like that anymore. That’s when I break away from my natural work and look to do creative solutions to things that I need to do in the future. Things that I need more time, you know, can I automate that? Can I do that? Can I tweak that? And that’s what I do to try and drive that efficiency and productivity in my work. So, I kind of actually produce a lot more than I’m meant to because a lot of it’s automated.

But that’s because I’ve been playing around with it in the afternoon to get it automated. If that makes sense, that’s my personal solution, but that’s not everyone’s bread and butter. Okay. Cause everyone is not like that. some people, productivity might be around the other way. Okay. And they might need to switch that. but also some people might not really like to do technology. Some people might hate the idea and that’s the other end.

Well, in that case, that’s your frog. That is your eat that frog. The thing that you don’t want to do today, you don’t want to learn that new application. You don’t want to find out how that works. Well, that means I recommend you do that at the start of your day, because that’s the least thing that you want to do. And you schedule that time. You make sure you do that time to make sure you improve it. Because the one thing that’s guaranteed

is technology is changing and you need to adapt and you need to learn. you have to do it. do it first thing and get it out of way.

Santiago Tacoronte (15:01)

I like how you have mixed now, have you brought to the picture another shade of productivity, which is energy management. Eat your frog and I love the eat your frogs here, right? Eat your… I haven’t, I haven’t. me write it down. But I love the idea of eating the frog when you have enough energy.

Andy Bates (15:08)

Mm.

You’ve never read that book. If you’ve never read that book, it’s a good book to read. Eat that frog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a good book.

Santiago Tacoronte (15:25)

to face your fears and your stress and say like, you know what? I’m going to do it. I will eat that frog. I love that part. Andy, let’s talk myths, You deal with change management every day. There are a lot of myths around change management and technology. Do you have something that you say when you start one of these large programs, so you need to, you know…

Andy Bates (15:41)

Hmm.

Santiago Tacoronte (15:49)

change something in the life of 80 ,000, 100 ,000 people? Do you have something that really you say, my God, this is such a myth, right? This is not true.

Andy Bates (16:01)

depends on what it is to be fair. you know, every project will have a different myth and myths also are related to the individual. So every individual will have different perceptions and understandings about what the reason why I’m not going to adopt it is going to be. For example, it’s not going to work. We’re going to have teething problems. The platform is going to blow up.

This is going to take a load of time to learn all those kinds of things. So there’s lots of, I will not do because there was a, can I bring it to my diving training as an instructor? Can I? So yeah, in, in, there’s a, there’s a concept that I remember and it’s something that I use in change management as well.

Santiago Tacoronte (16:37)

Please. Yes, please.

Andy Bates (16:45)

So, and this is to do with sales. So very different. So I became a PADI scuba diving instructor when I was taking career break between operations management and what I’m doing now. And one of the things they teach you is how to sell things. And one of the key concept that I learned through my PADI course was the five nos as in.

When you try and sell some to someone, they’re going to give you five reasons why they don’t want to do it or can’t do it or five excuses. Now that’s an arbitrary number because it’s not really five, but the point is you’re going to get someone say, I don’t want to do it. This is why the skill is to work through those why nots and to break each one down. I don’t have enough money. Well, it’s actually not that expensive. I’m scared of the water. What are you scared of?

What part of it is it sharks? Well, we don’t have sharks around here, et cetera. And you work through each one of these five knows until eventually they kind of run out of energy to reject because all their fears have been relayed. And now all they’ve got is the, will not as gone. So actually I just will. Okay, fine. I’ll sign up and do it. Change management is exactly like that as well. You’re going to get the No’s If you identify the No’s and you communicate the No’s.

and why not clear the myths, then you might get past that.

Santiago Tacoronte (18:09)

Interesting how you blend diving and technology change management.

You said before that change is inevitable and technology is inevitable, It’s in our daily lives. What would be your advice to individuals that, are not very keen around technology because you already identified a group of people like you and I that love technology and love to try new tools and do new things. What’s your advice to people in order to

Andy Bates (18:38)

Hmm.

Santiago Tacoronte (18:42)

stay adaptable, current, and adopt technology as much as they can for all growth and happiness.

Andy Bates (18:49)

They need to do it. Unfortunately, it’s, it’s harsh, but everyone, I think in the workplace now, modern workplace needs to adapt to technology change. And if we don’t acknowledge that as an individual, then we’ve got potential issues because

Let’s say technology change is going to happen. Now that doesn’t mean we need to be scared. It means that we need to identify that something we don’t like, find out why we don’t like it and remove that individually. That’s self -development, self -growth, identifying why we don’t like it. Now I’ve actually got another analogy from myself that I can relate to.

So back when I was a child, I was very good at maths, but not good at English. Okay, so I went through all the school, easy, easy, easy, except for English where I failed my English GCSE. Okay, so I was born in England, failed my English GCSE. Maths, no problem, A, easy, no problems, done my A levels. But I couldn’t go to university unless I passed my English GCSE.

I got my entire life hating English, hating languages. In fact, I my French as well and anything else to do with languages. I found them all. because I was petrified of languages, petrified of learning them and everything, anything to do with it. I had a special teacher to get me through, to get me qualified so I could then go to university and do maths and computer science. all good. Got through that.

English not so bad, but still bad, still terrible. then roll on 15 years or 10 years later, I ended up getting into a department inside one of the organization of head of UK recruitment and internal communications.

Santiago Tacoronte (20:58)

Hehehehe.

Andy Bates (21:00)

problem. I now need to write an email. I need to write web pages and things like this, or I need to check my team’s doing it right. And my first attempt was awful. And somebody basically spent next year coaching me, my line manager, which I’m eternally grateful for on how to write, how to write stuff. It was awful year of my life. I hated it.

I hated basically red lines going through my work. But at the end of it, I got through it. I learned language a different way. I learned how to do it, not in the way of the school and business language. I clean clay scales and all this kind of stuff. I learned it more of a mathematical modeling kind of way, but I got through it. And now I do change communications as a job.

technology. So I got through that because I needed to. And I think that could be replicated to some people that hate technology change. You’re going to have to get through it. You got to, and it’s going to be painful, but you’re to be better off for it. So find out why you don’t like it and work through it with a colleague, a lime manager, a friend, and yeah, spend the time.

because it ain’t going away. Sorry.

Santiago Tacoronte (22:30)

That’s great advice Andy. I want to link this. Let’s link this to the other side of the coin.

And it’s how the successful adoption of something makes you feel. How did you feel after you kind of conquer your fears and you changed from, I didn’t pass the English exam to now I am creating formal communications for thousands of people in English.

Andy Bates (22:56)

Hmm. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Absolutely. It’s, it’s, it’s a journey. I’m not going to say anyone that’s ever read any of my communications is perfect because grammar is still going to be slightly out and using Grammarly and things like that. It was always a help or anything like that, or even Microsoft Word with the grammar. So it’s not perfect, but the structure is the structure, the way you lay it out and the way all that is, is really key. And how do I feel about that? Well, if I’ve

beaten that demon, you know, when I was told from a very young age, you’re not good at that. You can’t do that. You’re a genius over there, but you can’t do that here. And get through that. And now actually how it’s part of my job where I can actually perform. It makes me very happy because really that was my Achilles Hill as a child and I’ve got rid of it.

Santiago Tacoronte (23:55)

Hmm.

Andy Bates (23:56)

So any other Achilles heel, maybe my eating habits is probably the only one that’s going to let me down is something that I can fix, move forward with. I can achieve it.

Santiago Tacoronte (24:09)

So you think there is a prize waiting for you at the end of the climb?

Andy Bates (24:15)

Prize. wouldn’t necessarily say there’s a prize. I say I look at challenges differently. I used to be scared of failure, scared of and avoid things that I’m not comfortable with because I knew that I wasn’t good at everything. So you always want to your best self, don’t you? So you just show what you’re good at and you hide everything else. Now I’m

I’m a lot more open about what I’m good at and what I’m not. So when someone asks me to say, I’m not really good at that, but I’ll give it a go. Let’s see what I can do. You you’re not fearing failure anymore, which is a big step, I think.

Santiago Tacoronte (24:55)

Mm -hmm.

See, are two thinking cultures in this, skills and weaknesses and strengthsness There is this, a lot of people say, don’t focus on your weaknesses. Don’t try to improve your weaknesses. Focus on what you are great doing because this is what is going to take you to the top or to advance your career or to make you more fulfilled. Why you didn’t say no to this job and say, you know what?

Andy Bates (25:04)

Hmm.

Mm. Mm.

Yep. Yep.

Santiago Tacoronte (25:26)

English is not my thing. I’m not gonna work in my weaknesses.

Andy Bates (25:32)

I didn’t really think about it. So, so, no, yeah, I, I accepted the job because the person asked me, I trusted them. So when they are offered me the job, I knew them, I trust them. I accepted the job and didn’t really consider the amount of communication writing that I would have required. And after I got my first assignment back all literally, it was like, you know, word retract with changes and.

Santiago Tacoronte (25:35)

Hahaha!

Andy Bates (26:01)

Literally, I got the document back and every word was crossed out amended, except I had an and in the middle of the page that was untouched. That was it. So yeah, not great. So that’s where I went from. But you know, going back to your thing. No, we shouldn’t dwell on our weaknesses. We all have them. Don’t dwell on them. Don’t.

but don’t fear them either. I’m never gonna be as good at English as I am with my maths. That’s never gonna happen, no matter how hard I try. So it’s not worth it. This technology area is my strength, but I had to bring my English up to support the role that I do. Okay, so I’m not fearing that communication anymore.

Santiago Tacoronte (26:54)

I like the distinction between fear and being aware of your weaknesses and working on some of them because simply you need them.

Andy Bates (26:56)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, need it. You need to be able to do it. you need to be able to write an email. It pretty much the white collar person. If you can’t do that, you’re in trouble. So technology change, you need to be able to do it, whether you enjoy it or not. That’s up to you. It was up to you, but it’s kind of, it is, you need to find a way.

Santiago Tacoronte (27:06)

Exactly.

We talked before about people that has affinity for technology and more techies versus people that has other social skills or prefer to not focus their life around technology. But let’s talk about fear. And I think you tap on it briefly before.

It seems there is a trend of fear, particularly with AI, towards technology. Technology will take away my job. Technology is going to take almost in a dystopian way over an entire humanity. How do we balance? how to balance this fear of… Let me tell you something, it happens to me. One of these times I went back to the Canary Islands. I went to buy a…

I wanted to load my bus card, and there was this pole with the recharging machine, and I went there and it wasn’t working. So I went to the lady, and I asked her, hey, is this thing not working or working? She said, those things never work. Apart from that, they will steal your money. I was thinking to myself, ooh.

So a computer is going to steal my money. She clearly had a fear that this little pole to recharge your card is going to take her job away, clearly. So how do you need to push tech all the time, A new application, a new software. How do you convince people that this tech is good and it’s not going to take away their jobs?

Andy Bates (28:46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sometimes it does. That’s something we need to acknowledge. Sometimes it does. Okay. And, and, and it always has. So, the AI problem. So my personal journey with this about the fearing of AI, I’ve, I consider myself as a positive futurist. And as we go through and look at things in the future and see what

the existential threat is and things like that. It’s probably not Terminator, just to cut that one off. But looking at job and employment, I always had the view that, hey, look, we had the agricultural revolution, you know, 80 % of us worked in farming and then that went through, it was all right, just jobs moved. Then we had the industrial revolution. Again, just the jobs moved, but we all had jobs, there was a little bit of…

uncertainty, digital revolution, then we’re going into the local information age. Again, jobs have moved. And ultimately there’s still jobs because an economy can’t run without jobs. And we need people to earn money to do something, be productive, to generate income so we can all survive. So that’s an economical requirement.

So then when AI is coming along and AI is going to or displace jobs, because displace is a bit more positive word than take jobs. I thought, it’d be fine. However, I am a little bit concerned about the speed of it because the industrial age has shifted and basically took away people potentially were working.

blue collar skills, but really a threat because those jobs are getting removed and they don’t have the ability to retrain into white collar skills. So I acknowledge that and that is a concern. So it’s a real speed of AI. Like AI could cause job changes for people. And I won’t go into the social political solutions to that that I feel, because I think that’s a different podcast. So there is that concern.

Santiago Tacoronte (31:03)

Hmm.

Andy Bates (31:09)

However, for the day to day person, white collar in a normal job, it probably isn’t, it’s probably just going to move your job. And then one of the key things that I often work in right now, and I promote constantly, I’m always surprised about the low adoption, power ultimate, power BI, power apps, about how you can, you know, shift your job using technology and improve your job. So you’re doing less repetitive boring tasks.

more value add tasks, more interesting tasks. And this is the kind of thing that technology often do. It can remove those boring jobs. Can you imagine sitting there getting a recording from your boss that you need to sit on typewriter and type it out? Can you imagine that’s your job? Okay. All right. You were white collar back in the day. All right. Probably not anymore. So technology can move and shift that job, make it more interesting and challenging.

Santiago Tacoronte (31:54)

Okay.

Andy Bates (32:05)

And that is the way I generally see technology doing it along with AI. It can really help. I was sitting there today. Actually your area, actually power BI. I was trying to do some complex DAX in power query. Didn’t have a clue. You know what? Go and ask the AI over there. look at that. Code works. Brilliant. Stick that in job done. Thank you very much.

Santiago Tacoronte (32:28)

Let me finish with trying to get your advice. But your advice in a different way. You have changed the life of hundreds and thousands of people in very large corporations. What is your advice for the startup community, entrepreneurs, product managers, product owners, hundreds of thousands of them that are

Andy Bates (32:33)

Mm.

Santiago Tacoronte (32:51)

out there trying to get their startup to become a unicorn and raise growth and people to adopt their apps. What is your advice to them looking from all your corporate and large company experience?

Andy Bates (33:02)

Hmm.

Yeah. So, so, so it all comes down to the value proposition. Ultimately, what is your product going to do to benefit that individual? How is that individual or company going to what they’re going to gain? So the first thing you need to do is need to identify their problems. And obviously if you’re doing it just as a general widespread, then hopefully you know what problems are occurring in businesses in your sector.

but you identify those issues and then you say how your product fixes that problem. And you talk about that because that’s really getting their attention, getting their hook, getting their involvement, getting them to come back. And then from there, we can then start working through the more details because ultimately the key thing is getting their attention. So it’s the value proposition. a little more that we can look at. Okay.

Santiago Tacoronte (34:02)

Awesome, Andy. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with us. It was super interesting to learn from you. I’ve worked with you in the past, and your skills to make people change are commendable, are absolutely amazing. Let’s stay in touch, and I wish you very good luck with continuing changing people’s lives and helping them adopting technology.

Andy Bates (34:17)

Absolutely.

Brilliant. Well, thank you very much, Santi. Thank you very much for having us. It’s been a pleasure to be here today and yeah, call us back anytime. Take care.

Santiago Tacoronte (34:34)

well, thank

Santiago (34:35)

Thanks for listening to Productivity. I hope you found something useful in today’s episode. If you did, and it helps improve your life even a tiny bit, that’ll make me really happy. Remember, you can find Productivity on all major podcast platforms, like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, why not share it with a friend who might also find it helpful? Until next time, and keep growing and stay productive.