Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast

Change is hard, yet it a common reality. Dr. Ellie Gates, who led the Adobe Check-In redesign that replaced annual performance reviews, says the old change management playbook is dead. Change is now constant, and what organizations need instead is change agility.
In this episode, Dr. Gates breaks down why people resist change even when it makes sense, why leaders and employees go through the same change at completely different times, and what it really took to get rid of annual reviews at a company the size of Adobe.
What you'll get from this episode:
The 3 levels of resistance to change (I don't get it, I don't like it, I don't like you) and how to address each one
Why leaders are crossing the finish line of a change just as employees find out there's a race, and what to do about it
How a pre-mortem helps you anticipate resistance before you launch
The early signs a change is not landing, and why waiting for those signs means you're already behind
Which parts of traditional change management still matter, and what has to give way to change agility
How middle managers can lead a change they didn't choose, while still processing it themselves, by focusing on what is still in their control
Inside Adobe's Check-In: why they scrapped annual reviews, why they refused to rush a replacement, how they brought the resisters in, and how it saved over 80,000 management hours in a single year
How one CEO told his team the truth before missing payroll, and lost no more than 10% of his people
Three things to start this week, including how to diagnose your own resistance to change
About Dr. Ellie Gates
Dr. Ellie C. Gates, DSL, is an Assistant Teaching Professor at CU Boulder's Leeds School of Business and Founder of BusinessTechne and the Human Ingenuity AI Foundation. For over 25 years, she has partnered with C-level executives at Microsoft, Adobe, T-Mobile, Box, and Snowflake on their hardest transformations. At Adobe, she led the Check-In performance redesign that saved 80,000 management hours and cut voluntary turnover by 30 percent. Trained in Strategic Foresight, she reads emerging trends before most leaders know to look. She holds a Doctorate of Strategic Leadership and a Master's in Organizational Leadership and Business Administration. She is a change agent at heart.
Connect with Dr. Ellie Gates:
✅ BusinessTechne: https://www.businesstechne.com
✅ Human Ingenuity AI Foundation: https://www.businesstechne.com/hiai/
✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliecgates
Mentioned in this episode:
Beyond the Wall of Resistance by Rick Maurer
The ADKAR change model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement)
Mike Robbins, author and speaker on feedback
More from Speak Your Mind Unapologetically:
✅ Free Newsletter: https://assertiveway.com/newsletter/
✅ Take the Quiz 'Do You Speak Like a High-Impact Leader?': https://myassertiveway.outgrow.us/highimpactleader
✅ Follow the show host, Ivna Curi, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2/

Most of us check the odds before we try something big. MIT-trained engineer and serial founder Sanjay Manandhar, author of The Why Not Advantage, says that's the wrong number to look at. A statistic describes the crowd, not you.
At 16, Sanjay applied to US schools from Kathmandu. He needed a full scholarship and airfare, and his friends asked if he was nuts. In this conversation, he shares the formula he uses to rewrite his odds, what a Nobel Prize winner's 40 years of persistence teaches about timing, and why your odds change the moment you take action.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why "probability does not exist," and the difference between the crowd's odds and your personal odds
The BPCA formula (Belief x Preparation x Context x Action), and why a zero in any one variable takes your odds to zero
The variable people underestimate most, and why the hardest negotiation is the one with yourself
What Katalin Karikó's path to the Nobel Prize reveals about preparing for the moment context turns in your favor
"Activation energy": why progress feels stuck right before a breakthrough, and how to push through
Why any action beats overthinking when you're stuck, even if it isn't the perfect move
How to keep your conviction without falling into confirmation bias or following the crowd, with lessons from the dot-com bubble and Theranos
The deathbed test and the five-year test: two tools to decide what to do this week
About Sanjay Manandhar:
Sanjay Manandhar is a serial technology entrepreneur, mentor, and author of The Why Not Advantage: How Small Probabilities Create Outsized Outcomes. Originally from Nepal, he is an MIT-trained engineer. In 1994, he helped bring the internet to Nepal, and he has since founded and led multiple technology companies. He lives in Cambridge, MA, and loves trekking and motorbiking.
Connect with Sanjay:
Book and author site: https://sanjaymanandhar.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaymanandhar
The Why Not Advantage is available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook.
Mentioned in this episode:
Bruno de Finetti, Italian mathematician
Katalin Karikó, Nobel laureate and mRNA vaccine pioneer
Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Know someone usure of which path to follow? Send them this episode.
 
Quotes from Sanjay:
"Your odds change in your favor the moment you take action."
"You don't get to run your venture 1,000 times or your career move 1,000 times. You have one chance, maybe two."
"Negotiating with a counterparty is hard. The harder part is actually negotiating with yourself."
 
Chapters:
00:00 Agency, and why the odds you're quoted aren't your odds
01:17 "If you think of it, do it": his mother's advice about time
05:01 One talk to 60 people that led to an $80M startup
08:07 "Probability does not exist": the idea behind the book
10:39 The BPCA formula: why one zero sinks your odds
13:11 The Nobel winner who waited 40 years for her moment
18:05 The variable people underestimate most
19:55 Survivorship bias: is beating the odds just luck?
23:29 Why almost everyone who starts a marathon finishes
26:04 Activation energy: why water won't boil at 99.5°C
30:13 Overthinking? Any action beats the perfect action
34:00 Conviction vs. the crowd: lessons from bubbles and Theranos
39:07 The deathbed test: what you'll regret not doing

How do you disagree with a superior or your boss when you see a problem in a decision you still have to deliver? How do you influence senior leaders when you don't have the final say?
In this episode of Speak Your Mind Unapologetically, Ivna Curi explores managing up and upward influence through two real workplace stories from her book, Unapologetic Voice.
Amy spent six months building a business case after senior leaders dismissed a gap she saw in their plan. Rebecca challenged a leader's approach to restructuring by proposing an alternative that addressed his concern about confidentiality.
Their experiences reveal practical ways to challenge a decision, earn consideration for your ideas, and help your organization improve.
You'll discover:
How to disagree with your boss when your first concern gets dismissed: What to reconsider before repeating the same argument.
How to get senior leadership buy-in: Connect your recommendation to business consequences and the results leaders want.
How to push back without sounding combative: Address what the decision-maker is trying to achieve or protect.
How to build a stronger business case: Use individual conversations to test assumptions, understand objections, and improve your proposal.
How to recognize progress when you don't get a full yes: Evaluate whether a workable compromise improves the decision.
Three questions to prepare for a difficult conversation with your boss or a superior: Identify your disagreement, understand their concern, and propose a specific alternative.
If you're a manager, director, or VP navigating a rejected idea, an overlooked risk, or a decision you believe needs reconsideration, this episode is for you.
Share this episode with a colleague working to get a useful perspective heard, and follow Speak Your Mind Unapologetically for more on leadership communication and upward influence.

Being kind at work is easy when things are going well. Smiling, saying thank you, listening, remembering birthdays. The real test is what you do when there is a problem, a conflict, or a disagreement.
This episode is a self-assessment. Twelve everyday workplace moments that look polite on the surface and cost someone else something real. Escalating to a manager before ever telling the colleague what the problem is. Staying silent in a meeting, then criticizing the decision privately afterward. Calling someone disrespectful instead of naming the behavior. Saying yes when you mean no. Redoing a team member's work instead of telling them what to change.
The pattern underneath all twelve is the same. Avoiding an uncomfortable conversation feels like kindness to the person doing the avoiding, and transfers the cost to someone else in the form of lost information, lost time, lost reputation, or a lost opportunity.
Here is the test: if your discomfort leaves someone else worse off on information, time, reputation, or opportunity, that is not kindness.
Go through the twelve. For each one, decide honestly whether you are being kind or protecting your own comfort. Then pick one to change this week.
Key takeaways
Kindness measured in easy moments is worthless as a measure. What counts is how you behave when something is wrong.
Avoidance is not neutral. It moves the cost off you and onto someone else.
Directness is part of respect, not the opposite of it. Warmth plus avoidance is still a cost passed to somebody.
Character labels like difficult, toxic, abrasive, and disrespectful attack identity and give the other person nothing to act on. Behavior plus impact plus a specific request does.
People can only fix what they know about. Usable information delivered early is the actual kindness.
Leaders set the standard here. How you handle a disagreement teaches your team what is allowed.
The 12 checks 
Escalating to a manager before telling the colleague what the behavior is
Escalating without one conversation plus one reminder first
Staying silent in a meeting, which reads as agreement
Criticizing the decision privately after the meeting ends
Using character labels instead of naming behavior and impact
Being warm and polite as a way to avoid the real conversation
Saying yes when you mean no, then delaying and under-delivering
Passing someone over for an opportunity without naming the gap
Ghosting an email because you do not know what to say yet
Watching work go the wrong direction for weeks before correcting it
Redoing someone's work instead of explaining what needs to change
Concluding someone is not ready without ever telling them why

Most people who challenge a superior's decision get it wrong. They oppose. Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis, says the people who have changed her mind did something else: they stayed curious. They asked what happens after step two. They wanted to understand rather than object. By the end of the conversation she is the one asking them what they think, without realizing she was challenged at all.
That works because of the larger skill underneath it. Nita calls herself a translator, estimating 30 to 40% of her time goes to it: working out why a meeting matters, what the goal is, and which pieces of information will get someone there. The translation changes depending on whom you're speaking to. What she presents to a CEO is different from what she presents to the team building it or to a cross-functional peer.
She splits translation in two. Translating an idea to stakeholders means finding the intent and explaining it separately to each group that has to buy-in. Translating an idea into action means breaking the problem down and moving forward before the full plan is in place. She used both to launch the first IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference, arguing that sometimes you take the leap and build the wings on the way down.
She also names the Toastmasters feedback that changed her most: that she assumes too much and jumps straight to the answer. And she explains why technical leaders labeled direct or difficult are usually being read as too focused on the detail.
 
If you have ever had a good idea die on the way up, this episode is about the trip.
00:00 Meet Nita Patel, VP of Engineering at Otis
01:17 What Chess Teaches About Anticipating the Other Side
02:11 Know the Rules So the Unexpected Move Does Not Derail You
02:58 How to Make a Fair Call When the Rulebook Runs Out
03:56 Where Confidence Comes From in a Gray-Area Decision
04:35 Rules, Experience, Fallbacks: The Three Sources of Confidence
06:15 When Following the Process Costs You the Objective
07:30 Why the Analytically Best Move Is Not Always the Right One
09:02 How to Translate an Idea So Each Stakeholder Cares
10:25 Breaking a Big Idea Down So Others Can Act on It
10:47 Pitch Before It Is Perfect: Build the Wings on the Way Down
13:09 Hold the Why, Stay Flexible on the How
14:03 How to Challenge Your Boss Without It Feeling Like a Challenge
16:39 The Questions That Actually Change a Leader's Mind
19:39 Why "Too Direct" Usually Means "Too Detailed"
22:13 Find the Real Problem Before You Solve the Wrong One
25:56 The Feedback That Changed How She Briefs Executives
30:57 Why 30 to 40% of a VP's Week Goes to Translation
32:13 Nita's Closing Advice: Everyone Has Influence to Use