Podcast

Ep 7 – The HR Series: Telcos, get ready for workforce transformation

November 10, 2020

This week’s guest

Jim Abolt

Senior HR Professional and Leadership Guru

Forget technology and hyperscalers for a minute. If your company is going to survive its inevitable move to the public cloud, you need to start focusing on your people — retraining your team, hiring new talent, and in some cases – letting some people go. That’s right, we’re going to talk about a forbidden topic in this episode: firing people.

This is first in my three-part HR series about the people-side of big change. I’ve known our guest, Jim Abolt, for two decades. You may have heard my interview with him about leadership in Episode 1. If not, take a listen when you get a chance. It’s great.

Jim is an SVP of Human Resources and a leadership guru. He knows more than anyone I’ve met about the effect of big change on the people within an organization.

Hit the play button to hear Jim’s take on:

A framework for ushering in change that can be used by anyone – from Girl Scout Leaders to say, President-Elects [04:16];
The most overlooked element that can inspire team members to lead the way [05:06];
The three reasons some changes don’t gain traction [03:15];
How to model the way forward [08:28];
How to handle resistance to your new vision [10:57]; and
The intersection between Spock and Mother Teresa [12:20].

Links and Resources

You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Check out my blog posts about Jim’s five-step framework for making your cloud vision a reality:
- Go Get ’em, Part 1 and Part 2
Listen to Telco in 20 Episode 1 to hear Jim talk about transformational leadership
How not to implement change: watch Office Space, the movie. The leaders in this movie don’t explain why the changes are happening and instead hire consultants to figure out how to change the culture.
A really good example of leadership in a movie is Remember the Titans. Denzel sets an ambitious goal and takes over a team 100% opposed to him and turns it around. Inspiring.
Download my guide, Time to go to the public cloud! The essential steps for complete cloud success

Guest bio

Jim Abolt is a senior HR professional and leadership guru. He’s widely regarded as an expert in leadership development, culture shaping, and large-scale organizational change. Throughout his career, he has played key roles in helping multimillion-dollar companies with global growth, merger and acquisition integration, and succession planning.

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The Telco in 20 podcast won a 2022 Gold Hermes Award and was recognized on Forrester’s 2021 list of the Top 100 Channel Podcasts and Feedspot’s Top 10 Telecom Podcasts list.

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