# Fix it loud — what it really means

- **Episode:** [110](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/110.md) (2024-06-27)
- **Type:** panel-interview
- **Tags:** leadership, culture, change
- **Time:** 35:42–40:50 (start 2142s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/110?t=2142](https://truthliesandwork.com/110?t=2142)

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[35:42] Paula Brockwell: I think the first step is always going to be, how do we want it to be around here from a leadership point of view? What is it that we need to get from people? And then have a conversation with your staff about how you get that, really listen and do some quick wins with them. So, it depends on your— if I'm honest, it depends on your starting point. My default is always, as soon as possible, activate your whole business around being the change that they seek. But it really depends on the history of listening, trust, and the kind of colleagues feeling like they can be safe enough and they've got the permission to do something different. So, if you're already in that place that you're just a bit stuck, you know, you've generally got that sense of listening and trust and kind of safety, but things have just got a bit stuck, I'd be saying, Set your standard. This is how we want people to behave around here. This is how we want it to be around here, and this is how we want people to feel. I think that's an important part of it as well, the emotional piece. So do that little bit of thinking and work in line with your strategy and where you're going, and then really quickly get out with colleagues and say, how do we do this? What do we do? And listen to people. Give them the space to do some of those things. If it's within their gift, ask them to do it and praise them and support them and remove the blockers for them to do it. But if it's a bigger business problem, listen and fix it and fix it really loud and show people that you're fixing it. in a loud way. And I think in doing that, you build trust that something can be different, and you're encouraging people to do things differently, and it'll start to move things forward. So at all points, you've just got to build that sense of momentum and agency with people and get them going. But there's no point in just doing some stuff. It's got to make sense, which is why I say start with that. This is how we want it to be around here to achieve this in our strategy, because then that makes sense to people. It's not just like, oh, more pizza. Okay, let's see what we can do around that
[37:28] Al Elliott: You used a phrase there, Hayley, like fix it loud. Now, can you— I think I understand what it means, but can you explain what that means, why it's important? If you have an example of someone who's fixed it loud, that'd be phenomenal
[37:40] Paula Brockwell: Yeah, absolutely. So fix it loud for me is about, well, a few things really. Really consciously accepting and acknowledging that there has been a challenge and a pressure point that's impacted colleagues there. So you're showing people that you hear them and you understand their experience. And then as you do whatever the re-engineering or the fixing is, you are telling people what you're doing, but also the impact that it's having. So I'm not saying do this in a survey, you said, we did way. I'm saying do this in a, you said, look what we're up to and we're asking you to get involved in, look at the impact that it's had, look at the next stage. So really talking to people about the flow-through and the impact so that you're building that sense of they are listening, they are helping, they are doing the difficult things that are going to make a difference. So it's really about that. that narrative and story the whole way through to really make things make sense. And I'm not just stopping at the bit of, well, we're gonna do it, we've heard it, and now we're planning to do it, but this is how we followed through on the plan and this is the impact that it had, I think is massively important. And doing that as lively as possible. And I suppose an example to give you, an organization that I worked with probably about 18 months ago, massively kind of bureaucratic. All of their systems had become really caught and multifaceted, and just people ended up going around in circles, and they didn't know who owned what, and they had a real issue with their purchasing process. So that's the, you know, I make the joke about the £500 sign-off, but they had that issue of literally, you know, a business of about 1,800 people, and the highest budget line sign-off was £500, and the rest went to the exec. Like, they probably, they must have just been signing purchasing receipts for, you know, 92% of their time. I don't know. Anyway, so what they did was they had a look at that process, the delegated Authority process around budgeting. They very visibly raised that level around kind of what level of budget people could sign off on. But also, they looked at the process for onboarding suppliers and managing suppliers and massively reduced the amount of admin harassment. That's what— that's how the business experienced it, and barriers that people had to face. So this was a day-to-day pain point for the rest of the business where The risk management of the system had got in control of something that really was blocking people's ability to just focus on their day job and get things done. And they just pulled it apart and fixed it in a— it was about an 8-week period. We planned it as a 6-week sprint, but it took about 8 weeks in the end to really get it right. But it really made a difference. And people saw visibly, okay, we're willing to tackle the really tough things, and we're willing to—
[40:13] Leanne Elliott: Yeah
[40:15] Paula Brockwell: We're willing to let go of things that have been really painful for a long time to make sure that we can move forward. And it built a huge amount of goodwill and trust and just an everyday reminder to people that every time they touched that system, which people did a lot, given what the business did, that every time they touched that system, it was suddenly easier. And it gave them a daily reminder that actually the business was serious about this change. So, it's, you know, it's not just about how you do it, it's about picking some of the Visible stuff that is continual pain points, because then you're giving people that continual bump of emotion and reminder of trust that you're actually doing something differently