IFO Blog Changing it up at Fusion 2013

Posted by Diane SearsWhen Peter Sheahan was preparing for his opening day keynote address at Fusion 2013, he researched the issues financial operations professionals face today in their careers."I ended at one spot, one conclusion," the author of best-seller Flip! and CEO of ChangeLabs told the audience of Fusion, the annual conference of The Institute of Financial Operations taking place this week at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort in Orlando, Fla. "You all are going through a little bit of change."Ya think? When it comes to change, the accounts payable and accounts receivable professions, and certainly the fields of financial information management and data capture, are experiencing so much of a metamorphosis that it's sometimes hard to keep up.That's normal, Shehan says. But keeping up is key to staying on top professionally. People respond to change in one of three ways, and maybe you can guess which one he and other change agents advocate:1) Curl up in a corner in a fetal position, sucking their thumbs, making mewing sounds, and hoping it all goes away.2) Do nothing.3) Ask what the change will mean for them, think it through, and create a new reality.Create a new reality. Hmm. How do you go about doing that? Sheahan walked the audience through several concepts that are essential to understanding how to create large-scale behavioral change, whether you're trying it at home, at the office, or in the world.For instance, people make decisions based on what that behavior says about them to the rest of the world. Sheahan talked about how he chose a $1,500 designer suit over an identical $800 one because the sales manager Sheahan's potential clients surely would be able to tell the difference, even if Sheahan couldn't. For the seller, it was all about stitching together the story that would click for Sheahan as the buyer. He can laugh about it now.He gave a shout out to Financial Ops magazine and an article in the first-quarter issue about building a case for automation using both hard ROI, or data, and "soft ROI," or anecdotal evidence."Do not underestimate the power of the story," he told the audience. "It is the birthplace of motivation."Packaging and design are also important to changing behavior. Sheahan gave the audience something to ponder - something movie theaters have known for years but consumers haven't stopped to consider: If someone gives you a larger container of popcorn, you will eat 54 percent more, sticking your hand in the container 21 more times.The audience was riveted by Sheahan with his Australian accent and many other stories about how companies have enticed people to adopt widescale changes. He offered the audience access to 26 videos for going from idea to execution, and after the keynote he signed books for audience members.But even Sheahan himself admitted to a small change that, well, freaked him out a bit. As he took the stage, IFO Executive Director Jo LaBorde and Vice President of Operations and Conferences Ken Brown played a little joke on him, delivering a stuffed animal. A very special stuffed animal. A 3-foot-tall giraffe, which he perched right next to him.Sheahan explained that he had joked with the IFO team about being a "high-maintenance" speaker who wanted only blue M&Ms in his room - oh, and a giraffe. But the stuffed reality that stood next to him was so distracting, staring out at his audience, that it threw off his mojo. He stopped and moved it to the far end of the stage, and then continued his presentation.