Navigating Digital Change by Leaning Into Tech and Expanding a Human Touch with Agathe Daae-Qvale
listening SUPERPOWER podcast
Understanding User Maturity for Market Success
The chapter explores how tech companies are focusing on effective communication strategies to connect with their target market, emphasizing the need to listen to customers and employees to drive change. It discusses the importance of creating shared understanding and purpose within organizations, aligning leadership expectations with on-the-ground reality, managing change gradually and comprehensively, and improving employee skill sets for successful digital transformations.
Many organizations struggle to balance technical project demands with the human elements essential for successful change. This gap often leads to inefficiencies, low morale, and failed initiatives, despite thorough planning and structured processes. Ignoring the emotional aspects of teams prevents companies from unlocking their workforce's full potential. Integrating both technical and human sides of work, with a focus on consistent communication and emotional awareness, is crucial. Enabling this holistic approach helps organizations achieve dynamic processes that meet goals and foster a joyful, productive work environment.
Agathe Daae-Qvale is an Integral Master Coach™ working in leadership development that focuses on both the human and tech sides of digital transformation. She works as a special advisor in the Norwegian public health care sector on new software technologies and their successful applications.
In 2017, she founded TinkerBlue AS and later co-founded DoubleYou AS in an effort to unleash underused tech potential and skill sets among internationals in Norway.
Agathe is proficient in industrial IT and process modeling and improvement, IT governance, IT strategy, IT operations, and product management.
Her experience includes working with management consulting companies like EY, KPMG, and Sopra Steria. She has worked as a consulting director in the exhilarating growth phase of the industrial IT unicorn Cognite, which primarily focuses on industrial data and digitized product management. She has also served as Chief Development Officer for Cenium, responsible for product development and global distribution during the shift from local based to cloud based platform technology.
In this episode Agathe shares insightful discussions on balancing the technical and human aspects of business, especially during times of change. She talks about her experiences and practical strategies for integrating emotional awareness into structured, technical environments. You'll also learn about the importance of consistent communication, the role of personal growth in effective change management, and how to motivate teams by recognizing and expanding their perceptions of possibilities.
"For change to happen, raise the awareness of possibilities --- that space of possibilities is crucial." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
SUPERPOWER Notes:
01:21 - What she realized the time she first noticed the power of listening: It was not only about the words but very much about the sentiment and the capacity of both of us to open up for in that very moment
04:08 - What it means to be in a shared space: That moment when you are in a conversation; you're just completely paying attention to what's going on there
08:00 - The distinction between merely getting the work done and creating a meaningful, emotionally resonant shared space
17:10 - The crucial integration of human change management with technical change
21:21 - How creating a shared understanding and clear purpose within the organization is crucial for the successful adoption and implementation of new technologies and changes
25:16 - Here's how to achieve a shared understanding: The organization needs to be well aligned both vertically and horizontally.
29:07 - Achieve vertical and horizontal alignment in an organization: Important to give everyone a shared direction and the why as to what they're doing.
32:54 - What does effective change management require: In addition to communication, skill sets and competence in the company among coworkers and staff is super important.
37:56 - Making that lasting change and effect happen: Value, moral and a sense of entrepreneurship are also needed to make that lasting effect happen.
42:54 - Helpful tools for navigating change effectively: It's about listening to, first, myself and then start listening to others around me.
45:33 - Moving past the resistance in others: Have the respect for self and others and have them to focus on an outcome.
52:40 - Agathe's inspiring words: Keep opening up that space to keep expanding that shared space.
Key Takeaways:
"When we make change happen in technology, you can never go beyond what people actually perceive and what the masses perceive." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
"I do think that the human side of change is not only a success factor, but it's a floor on which technical change stands most of the time." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
"I do believe that the leadership is where to start [to get to that shared understanding] and then create an infrastructure and a team that can have the capacity and ability to make that happen, to follow up, to follow through with it." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
"I realize that we all catch what we can according to our own skill sets, but if you want an organization to change the way they work or to change the products and services, it's super important to start with that education of people." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
"The self is very often considered individual. If we are in a team, that sense of self, we can share that in a group. Then it becomes so much more powerful." - Agathe Daae-Qvale
Notes/Mentions:
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Terri O'Fallon: https://www.terriofallon.com
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Robert Kegan:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan
Connect with Agathe Daae-Qvale:
Connect with Raquel Ark:
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Mobile: + 491732340722
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contact@listeningalchemy.com
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Podcast email: listeningsuperpower@gmail.com
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