Change for the better: How your attitude can make all the difference

Instead of worrying about failure when undergoing a change initiative, why not ask, “What happens if we succeed?” That is summarized sentiment from a discussion with Al Dea, admittedly a glass-half-full guy, on the Journal of Accountancy podcast.

Dea, a leadership development consultant and founder of the organization The Edge of Work, is the keynote speaker at the Aug. 12–14 Governmental Accounting and Auditing Update Conference. In this episode, Dea explores pain points for dealing with almost constant change, how the last five years have affected our ability to manage change, and more.

The virtual conference has an early-bird discount of $150 for attendees who register by Saturday.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• Why humans tend to seek a “steady state.”
• One exercise Dea recommends for professionals worried about what change might bring.
• Why it sometimes may be impossible to have a playbook or manual for a change initiative.
• The concept of being “sturdy” for others and how it can make a difference amid volatility.
• Why it’s OK to not have all the answers for how to navigate change.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Al Dea is delivering the keynote address at the online Governmental Accounting and Auditing Update Conference in mid-August, and he’s joining me, the Journal of Accountancy’s Neil Amato, on this episode of the JofA podcast. Welcome back, listeners.

Today, we are talking change, change management, change without a playbook, resistance to change, all of those angles, and how they relate to today’s finance professionals. Again, Al, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being on.

Al Dea: Neil, it’s great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to chat with you.

Amato: Yeah, glad we can have you on the show. Ash Noah, one of my Association colleagues and someone with a broad background in finance leadership, in a blog post a few years back, cited data showing that most initiatives related to digital transformation fail most of the time. How can people listening to this conversation hear that and still be gung-ho about the change initiatives that are going on all around them in their organizations?

Dea: It’s a really good question and a fair point. I’ll try to give some guidance and perhaps some reframes that could be helpful. The first thing I would say is that if we are going to think about what if we fail, I think it’s only fair to also ask ourselves the opposite end of that question. What if we succeed? If you’re going to always take the downside, well, shouldn’t we also consider the possible of the upside as well? Because that number, and I’m familiar with it, also means that some people are succeeding. While they may not be a large number, I think it’s an important rational argument to make.

The second, maybe, argument I would make is to ask the question: What would you define as failure? Because maybe it doesn’t work out the way that you intended, but maybe it still works out in a different way. What also if it spawns something new? Many of our greatest innovations and inventions in the world came off of things that were failures or combinations of things that perhaps didn’t work in the past. In some ways, you have to accept the number but dig a little bit further into it to better understand what other possibilities might happen as a result of things failing and finding opportunity in that.

Then perhaps maybe last but not least, I would argue, as we’re recording this in the summer of 2025, we are in a new world of work, so to speak, and if you think about change in the past, can you really consider it apples to apples with some of the changes that many finance professionals are facing today? That could be the technology changes, it could be the regulatory changes, it could be the economic changes. It may not necessarily always be an apples-to-apples comparison. Those might be the reframes, and so while I acknowledge and appreciate the statistic, that would be what I might offer to perhaps have someone think a little bit differently about, despite what the research says, why it might be possible to be successful with change efforts today.

Amato: Great start. I’ll briefly step aside, take a detour, and say, one, if you couldn’t already tell, Al hosts his own podcast. He’s pretty good in front of the mic. Al, tell us a little bit about your podcast and actually just what you do, because I didn’t really introduce you other than saying your name.

Dea: Sure. Happy to. Al Dea, I am the founder of The Edge of Work and host The Edge of Work podcast. I work with organizations to develop their leaders through leadership development and other talent consulting and training programs. My goal is to help organizations develop the leaders they need to lead and succeed in this changing world of work. I spend most of my days talking to organizations and facilitating conversations and trainings with organizations to help those leaders become change-ready. In addition to that work, I have the privilege of speaking at a lot of industry events. I’ve spoken at many AICPA events in the past.

Then last but not least, as you mentioned, I host The Edge of Work podcast, which is a podcast at the intersection of talent, leadership, and the future of work, and really looking at what are some of the leading-edge thinkers doing and changing in some ways to create a better world of work, particularly as it relates to talent and leadership development.

In many ways, as you can see, I’m a little biased about the opportunities that come with change, but also in the work that I do, both in terms of working on the ground with leaders every day, as well as the conversations that I’m having on my podcast, I’m seeing pockets of possibility and opportunity. And I think that was what makes me so happy and excited to be a part of this conversation today, and also to be a part of the conference at the end of the summer.

Amato: Thanks. Again, we are recording in early June for publication in the early summer. What’s the difference to you between change for ourselves and change for others, and should such changes be approached differently?

Dea: Great question. I think it’s prescient, I think, for many of your listeners. I know, depending on where you work or the type of finance or accounting that you’re in, in some cases, you may be thinking about change for yourself in terms of internally, of what’s happening in your organization. But also, for that matter, some of you are maybe thinking about change in the context of your clients and the organizations that you serve.

Regardless of who you are, or whether this change is something that you’ve got to do for yourself or that you’ve got to do for others, I think one fundamental truth is this: Change involves humans. From what we know, from the psychology and evolution of humans, is that human beings, as a species, are wired to survive. Neil, that’s why you and I are actually here on this podcast today, because back way, long time ago, our ancestors found ways to make sure that they could be safe and could survive, and that’s why we’re here.

But this is precisely why it’s true that while people can absolutely change, it is also why sometimes it is so hard for us to change, and then in some cases, why it can be so hard for others to be open to change because of that need to survive and that need for stability. If you’re wondering why it might be hard sometimes for you, or why you might react so negatively to change, at least at first, know that it’s sometimes for a good reason, because it’s probably your brain and your body telling you that you’re trying to survive and be safe. But I think that’s also important to recognize and remember, particularly if you’re trying to lead change on behalf of others. And again, that could be others on your team, others in your organization, or others being your clients.

Sometimes, even if it rationally makes sense, our bodies and our brains are trying to protect ourselves. I think one thing that does come to mind when I think about, regardless of whether you’re leading change for yourself or you’re leading change for others, it really does come back to remembering just kind of what makes us human, and is that ability to survive.

Then the last thing I would just say with this is that, particularly when we are leading change for others, remembering that just like you have a relationship with change, so too might be the people that you’re leading, and that is unique and personal to them. While it’s important to think about, particularly if you’re rolling out some larger change, playbooks, and processes, and steps, and things, all of those are important. And, it’s important to remember that people have a different relationship to change. In some cases, if you want people to change, you’ve got to find ways to better understand where are they with the change and how can you work with them to bring them on the journey to getting to that end state.

Amato: I’m going to get to my playbook question in just a bit, but first this. In the last five years, do you think people have grown more comfortable with change, or are they just over it at this point?

Dea: It’s a good question. I mean, I appreciate the question, too, because I think I know people on both sides of the coin. I think I know people who are really exhausted because there have been so many changes  and fluctuations and ambiguity over the last five years. Not that we haven’t experienced that previously, but it does really, anecdotally, feel like it has been one change after one change after one change, and this desire to get back to a steady state.

But on the other side of that, I think if anything we kept seeing from the past five years, it is that there have been multiple experiences, multiple examples, both at the collective level, but perhaps also at the individual level, where we have shown ourselves that we can in fact change and that we can find opportunities within it.

I think it’s a “yes, and” – I think it kind of goes both ways. I think at the end of the day, one thing I often think about is that look, and particularly over the last five years, there’s probably a lot of change that has happened to us where we didn’t necessarily choose it. We didn’t choose a global pandemic. We didn’t choose macroeconomic pressures. We didn’t maybe choose a decision that was made by the top leaders of our company, but we still have to find ways to navigate through it.

But the one thing regardless of how you feel about change that I think is true for everyone, is that while you may not always have the ability to choose the fact of whether or not something is changing, you do have agency and choice over how you want to respond, and that doesn’t mean you have to like it. It doesn’t mean you have to be gung-ho about it, but it does mean that you do have to take, or you have the opportunity and the invitation to make of it what you want of it. I would say that regardless of where you sit on that continuum with your relationship to change over the past five years, that is the one thing that unites and is in common with everyone is that they do have choice in terms of how they want to respond to it.

Amato: They may not always have choice on whether there’s guidance for that change because it may just be so fast. I’m going to ask this, is change easier if there’s a manual, or do people just need to accept that things are just moving so fast that coming up with a playbook is just not possible because the playbook is going to be out of date?

Dea: It’s a good question, and I think it’s one of those “yes, and” questions. The analogy that first came to mind as I’m thinking about this off the top of my head is, if you’re a child and let’s just say that your family moves around a lot, the first time your family moves around, I’m sure it’s probably going to be really difficult. But the second or third time, it still may be difficult. But yes, I would assume, and I think we can reasonably agree, the second or third time, knowing that you’ve done something in the past, hopefully, will give you confidence that you can navigate through it again.

It may not make everything easy, but I think it will make it easier. I think there’s probably an analogy for many of us professionals in the workplace. Your organization goes through a new system upgrade, but then they want to go through another one a couple of years later. You probably may not love it, but you’ve got something that you can glom onto in the past. You’ve got experiences and memories you can pull from that can be helpful in terms of navigating forward.

Where I think it gets tricky is that for many of the changes that many of your listeners probably are experiencing right now, be it new regulatory changes, be it new tariffs and things that you have to deal with, be it new technologies and emerging technologies that continue to evolve at a rapid pace. Be it all of those things. I think in many of those cases, what we’re finding is that when we try to go and dust off the old playbook for how to handle this thing, A, it doesn’t necessarily work, or B, it’s not an apples-to-apples thing.

In some cases, many of these listeners are encountering green-field situations where maybe there isn’t even a regulatory framework. Maybe there aren’t even rules that you can follow. I do think it is true that a playbook can be helpful, but the challenge with always relying on playbooks is that you don’t always necessarily have a playbook to rely on. I do think it makes sense to better understand, in a world of work where sometimes those old playbooks don’t work, how do we make sense of where we are at this moment, and how do we find ways to respond?

There’s a famous Albert Einstein quote that I think really encapsulates this and where we are today for many of the things that I think your professionals are facing, which is, “You cannot use an old map to explore a new world.” I think for many of us who are in this new world of work, some of those old maps maybe aren’t cutting it anymore.

Amato: It’s clear that the profession and really many professions are just in a time of regular, fast-moving change. To quote definite friend of the program, and I believe someone you know also, my colleague Tom Hood, “The waves of transformation are just going to keep rolling in.” What is your closing-thought advice for the listeners today, our finance professionals, to best navigate change?

Dea: It’s a great question. Yes, big fan of Mr. Tom Hood. A couple of things I would start with. I think the first thing I would start with is really getting a better understanding of your own relationship to change and the specific change or waves that are coming. As I said earlier, while we are all human, many of us experience change differently or appreciate change in different ways. I think just grounding yourself before even thinking about what you need to do around, what is the change? How am I experiencing it? What might I have to think and work differently as a result of this change? How does this impact the relationships I have? That kind of self-awareness and self-reflection, I think, is always a great starting point just to get a sense of where you are.

I think the second thing that I might offer up is thinking about this idea of even when everything may feel like it’s changing, most of the time, there are always going to be things that remain true and constant. Those things can help keep us sturdy in times of change. Assuming that literally not everything is changing, one simple exercise I often recommend is to get people to actually write down what is actually staying the same. What are the things that I know that I can rely on?

Again, going back to human evolution, we know that humans do really well with stability and having routines or having predictability. Grounding us and what’s staying the same can offer us some confidence, particularly when we do enter those moments where things are changing around us, and having those roots and that sturdiness, if you will.

Then perhaps the last thing I might offer up, particularly to those of you who are either open to this idea of change or at least maybe a little bit afraid but understand you may need to do something. I actually think that being someone who can be sturdy and reliable to other people can be a very purposeful, as well as meaningful, role when change is happening around you, particularly again, for your peers, the people you lead or for your clients.

Even if you don’t have all the answers, having that sense of purpose and meaning when everything is changing, even if you don’t have all the answers, that alone can give you a playbook for how to respond, and certainly it’s something that your colleagues and your clients might appreciate, too. Those are a couple of places I might offer up as a starting point to thinking about, for all the waves of transformation that are coming in, how you might be able to weather them and hopefully surf through them in a positive way.

Amato: That’s great. I like the surfing reference. The online GAAC for short, Governmental Accounting and Auditing Conference, is coming up in mid-August. In the show notes for this episode, we’ll include the registration information for that event. Al, thank you very much for being on the Journal of Accountancy podcast.

Dea: Neil, it’s a pleasure.