Compromising Positions - A Technology Podcast · Compromising Positions

Cha, Cha, Cha Changes! How to Get Excited About Organisational Change

·44 min·3 clips

Paula Cizek says security leaders cannot make people want their recommendations, but can search for overlapping interests.

1. Compromising Positions: A Technology Podcast uses organisational change to examine how technology and security teams can make new ways of working easier to adopt. 2. Leanne Potter, a cyber anthropologist and head of security operations for a major retailer, and Geoff Watkins, a cybersecurity enthusiast and CTO for a major tech consultancy, host the discussion with Paula Cizek. 3. Paula Cizek, chief research officer at Nobel Collective, answers how leaders can help people transition when strategy, technology, or organizational behavior changes. 4. Cizek says leaders often feel excited because they have already spent time shaping a change, while other employees encounter it only when it is announced. 5. Cizek identifies loss of time and competence when employees must learn a new process and temporarily work less efficiently. 6. She adds that a change can create loss of pride or narrative when leaders describe previous work as the wrong way to operate. 7. Cizek advises leaders to praise past contributions, explain why the change is happening now, and recognize that employees begin the transition later than executives. 8. She describes two types of organizational change: fail-safe changes that need to be mostly right initially, and safe-to-fail changes that can be tested through smaller experiments. 9. Cizek's skateboard analogy, borrowed from Spotify, contrasts a 15-minute prototype with spending years and substantial money building a Cadillac for a destination that may move. 10. The hosts apply that model to cybersecurity by contrasting a Fort Knox security build with testing whether a smaller padlock would meet the actual need. 11. Cizek says Nobel Collective identified about 25 recurring reasons for resistance and organized them into a Change Barriers card pack. 12. The cards include concerns about cannibalizing a business, lacking resources or skills, competing priorities, politics, and legal or regulatory restrictions. 13. Cizek recommends treating resistance as a reason to investigate rather than automatically labeling employees old-fashioned, lazy, or obstructive. 14. She says security teams can unintentionally encourage riskier workarounds when they reject every proposed system or process as too risky. 15. For a new two-factor authentication requirement, Cizek recommends explaining benefits such as protecting sensitive client information or enabling remote work. 16. She warns that leaders should not request feedback unless they have a way to incorporate it, because unacted-on consultation creates frustration. 17. Cizek defines psychological safety through examples such as reporting a missed deadline, revealing a security hole, or proposing an untested idea without expecting judgment. 18. She recommends brief meeting check-ins, safe-to-fail steps, and a tempered response when employees disclose that controls or protocols are not working. 19. Security leaders seeking practical change frameworks and safer user adoption will find concrete models here. 20. Listeners seeking technical vulnerability analysis or cybersecurity news may prefer another episode.

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