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Tales from the PROS is hosted by Michael Georgiou, Co-Founder, and Eric Lawrence, Director of Growth at Imaginovation, an award-winning app and software development company. Each episode dives into honest, unscripted conversations, hard-earned lessons, and educational insight into how to help bridge the gap between technology and people.
If you’re a founder, exec, or innovator trying to navigate the tech world without getting burned, this podcast is your no-BS roadmap. Through real talk, personal stories, and insights from the front lines, you’ll pick up smarter ways to build software, steer clear of common mistakes, and choose the right partners in a crowded, often confusing space.
Whether you’re scaling a startup, driving digital change at a larger company, or just love keeping up with tech innovation, Tales from the PROS brings you straight-shooting advice and inspiration without the fluff.
Michael Georgiou (00:01.282)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Tales from the Pros and I'm your host, Michael Georgiou co-founder at Imaginovation joined by my co-host and director of growth, Eric Lawrence. Today, we're diving into a topic that hits close to home for a lot of leaders, navigating change. Whether it's a new system, a shift in direction or introducing AI, as we all know, into your workflows, leading people through disruption is one of the hardest things you'll ever do.
That's why we're thrilled to have Cesar Viana Teague on the show today. He's a change management and enablement technology leader who helps other leaders turn disruption into results. His APEEE model simplifies the process of transformation, making it actionable and measurable. And he's worked with leaders across the U.S. and around the world to bring real adoption and growth through times of major change.
Caesar, welcome to Tales from the Pros. It's great to have you here, man. Thank you so much.
Cesar Viana Teague (01:01.106)
Thank you. Thanks for having me. To you and Michael and Eric.
Michael Georgiou (01:05.39)
Yes. So, Caesar, you'd like just kind of as an initial question here, like give us a little bit, you know, and maybe a minute or two, a little bit about your story, you know, just kind of how you got to where you are right now, doing what you're doing.
Cesar Viana Teague (01:24.54)
Yeah. And so I started off, know, really my background is in sales and marketing. So I've been doing that for, you know, over 35 years. and in the process I started, you know, really doing some training, facilitation, some instruction design, you know, and that was about, 18 years ago. and so the 12 years ago, I really got more into the enablement and change management space. So.
Michael Georgiou (01:29.73)
Okay.
Yeah, nice.
Cesar Viana Teague (01:54.62)
The things that the activities were doing in enablement change management have been around for a while. Maybe the nomenclature hasn't been around for that long. They would call it enablement or change management or both. And so I do a little bit of both. And so I was doing that to enable different teams, technology companies or non-technology companies, leaders of operations, and just really helping them raise their awareness around the work they're doing as a leader.
Michael Georgiou (02:05.826)
Mm-hmm.
Cesar Viana Teague (02:23.89)
to influence others to enable change. And because a lot of folks don't necessarily like change or they want to change, but there's a lot of benefits from changing. Hence, that's why call my website, it's called Change is Good. It can be, it always is, you know, but the idea is to empower Russia technology leaders with the rapid pace of change.
Michael Georgiou (02:41.219)
Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (02:53.77)
and iterations involved within software development, which you guys know full well in work you do in innovation that I'm not talking about change management within software development. There is that because I actually talked to a buddy of mine whose son worked with Stripe and I told him I doing change management. He goes, hey, that's what I do for Stripe. go, that's a different kind of change management.
Michael Georgiou (02:59.386)
yeah.
Michael Georgiou (03:17.08)
That's cool. We use Stripe a lot. mean, as we, you know, it's so, so, it's such a big platform. Yeah.
Eric Lawrence (03:20.772)
One of the main integrations. Yep.
Cesar Viana Teague (03:23.578)
Yeah. And so there's iterations and change management within software development, right? And the whole Agile process or what have you. so, but I'm talking about the change management that is about the people. And so, yeah. And so then, that's what I've been doing. And I got into that because again, of the training and coaching work I've been doing with other folks. And then I went out and now I'm expecting people to improve.
Michael Georgiou (03:35.554)
That's what I thought.
Cesar Viana Teague (03:50.394)
and to do things differently, then I have to do that myself. So I kind of went back to school, went back to get certifications and all those fun things. And then as you explore all these areas, you realize, man, there's so much out there, how much you don't know. The more you see, the more you learn, the more you realize how much there is yet to learn. And so...
Anyway, that's kind like what I've been doing. So I'm continuously improving myself and then that way can continue to add value to others. And that's what I do in essence for helping with the whole change management piece. And that's how I got into.
Eric Lawrence (04:30.609)
Great. Caesar, I am interested to know, you know, kind of going through the journey that you had, if there were any early experiences or lessons that shaped least how you approach guiding people through disruption.
Cesar Viana Teague (04:44.318)
Yeah. And so, you know, we're brought in, people are brought in, whether on the enablement and change management side, you're brought in to solve challenge for challenges. You're you're you're there. I mean, come on. People are hired for a reason. They're there to solve problems, to fix it, to ensure growth and everything else and trying to make it a smooth process. So, I mean, there's been so many challenges that I've faced along the way and they don't continue to get easier, by the way. So.
Michael Georgiou (05:02.348)
Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (05:14.11)
You know, most of the toughest problems are people problems and the major issues are usually around people. I we've heard of the CEOs firing people all at once on Zoom or we've heard of, you know, just people, of course, at this point with AI, a lot of fear around that and, you know, jobs being replaced and some people saying, well, no, jobs aren't being replaced. And it's both true and not true. It's just...
The way I look at it, AI is more about augmentation than it is about automation, although it's really a bit of both. So there's been some instances where I've come in, I started working with technology companies in 2012, really, when I started that for a travel software company. And then I moved into another company that did some high performance computing. And then to an IT company that manages a lot of the major.
Michael Georgiou (05:47.253)
I agree.
Cesar Viana Teague (06:08.818)
systems like the oracles, the SAPs and those things because arguably the most complex change comes with the most complex software. And what software are you going to find that's more complex than ERP? Maybe you know of one. I think ERP is arguably one of the most. And why is that? Well, because it touches a lot of departments, right? It touches a lot of people. So then you're asking a lot of people to change the way they're doing things.
Michael Georgiou (06:29.186)
Yeah.
Right.
Cesar Viana Teague (06:38.808)
And that is a disruption. That is, you mean I have to do this in addition to my day job? Or why are we doing this? All the questions that emerge, including in the back of people's minds, is my role going to be eliminated because of this change? So this will be a lot of, I asked a lot of questions there and raised a lot of points because I've really encountered those things along the way without mentioning any specific companies. Those are the types of technology companies I've been involved with.
Including with Salesforce ERP. There are actually some native Salesforce ERP platforms out there, believe it or not. There's only two or three, but it's still ERP. It's still complicated and it still touches a lot of folks. And so the idea of change management is not about the training on the new tool on the ERP system. Yes, that's very important. But I think
Michael Georgiou (07:22.478)
Mm-hmm.
Cesar Viana Teague (07:37.95)
a lot of what's been going on in the change management piece has really revolved around how are we going to train people and get them to adopt and apply this new tool or this new system, whether it's a GTM tool or you know, what have you, right? So I'll pause there for a second and then maybe you have some other questions around that.
Michael Georgiou (07:54.615)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (08:02.134)
Yeah, no, I was gonna say, no, I love it. I think what you do, Caesar, is actually very unique. Eric, it reminds me of some of the customers we work with. Let's just say a bigger company that we've worked with before that they come to us and they want us to basically build a centralized system that connects with hundreds of different third party systems that they use, ERP, one of them.
maybe a CRM, God knows what else, so many different types of systems that can connect to one that we build, right? To basically centralize and align their departments with, at least maybe on a data perspective, let's just say. And what we've experienced sometimes is sometimes like the lack of alignment between those departments. And when there's a piece of software that's being built, at least in this case, because that's kind of our area too, is that
it can cause a lot of kind of internal clutter and frustration, misalignment. can just create a lot of like red tape and just a lot of issues that we've experienced. And I think for you and what you do is really awesome because a lot of these organizations need that, especially now with AI and you mentioned fear, right? Being kind of a component now where I think people just don't really know
Cesar Viana Teague (09:14.75)
and
Michael Georgiou (09:30.508)
what to kind of do. They need that guidance from someone like you to help align their internal people and even externally to their customers. I think that's really cool.
Cesar Viana Teague (09:41.426)
For sure, know, productivity is going to dip for sure. There is no way around that because you're doing juggling, you know, a couple of new approaches and new technologies. So productivity will dip initially. The question is for how long and how do you accelerate the process to get people up to speed faster and minimize that, that, that dip, right? And because again, people have been making it about training people and getting that, but
If you're getting resistance and you have, you know, just like the technology adoption curve where you have the early adopters, then you have the majority in the middle of the bell curve, and then you have the laggards and those people on the other end. That applies very much here as well. And the reason for that, that's why I try to take a step back. I use my APEE model, as you mentioned, and I take a step back and I work with the technology leaders or subject matter experts, SMEs, to see, right,
You know, what are we going to do here in terms of clarifying for people our vision and mission behind this change? Why are we making the change? And from this internal perspective, change management, like you said, can be applied internally with things that are happening within the company. Or when you're, you know, selling a new software or new tools to other companies, you expect your clients to adopt it. But then if you don't do proper change management with them,
Michael Georgiou (10:56.142)
and I think that you said.
Michael Georgiou (11:07.223)
and the
Cesar Viana Teague (11:08.476)
What ends up happening is scope creep or as what Kleinemann calls it, scope explosion.
Michael Georgiou (11:14.858)
I love that Scope Explosion. that happens all the time. I like that. Scope Explosion.
Eric Lawrence (11:17.827)
yep, every project it seems.
Cesar Viana Teague (11:18.812)
I mean, you write every project because the S.O.W., the Statement of Work, which was for 100 hours or 500 hours, has now tripled or quadrupled because of what's being asked along the way. maybe they weren't really aligned. You talked about the misalignment. Well, it's very hard to align people if you're not...
taking the time to communicate and change management is a lot of it is about communication. The alignment, when you say alignment, that's a very important word, but how do you align? And so that's where proper change management comes in to make that effort and take a step back and use this AP model that I've come up with. It's not a change management model per se. There's Adcar from ProSci out there. There's the McKinsey 7S, there's the Kotter.
Eric Lawrence (11:50.437)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (11:50.52)
Mm-hmm.
Cesar Viana Teague (12:14.48)
eight step or end step method of change management specifically? I'm saying let's take a step back. Yeah, take a step back and do some strategic planning for the change and then you can decide which model are you going to use for the actual change itself, but you still need to take that step back and do an analysis and assessment of where are we and how are we going to communicate the why? Kind of like that famous Ted talk that Simon Sinek did about start with why.
Michael Georgiou (12:18.51)
I've of those before too.
Cesar Viana Teague (12:43.654)
really important and change management to start with why, especially from an internal basis to clarify, you why are we doing this? Then you reduce that resistance and minimize the disruptions, et cetera.
Eric Lawrence (12:55.793)
Yeah, could you? Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (12:55.864)
Talking, you're talking our language. Yeah, we love that. The why the purpose is so important. It's critical.
Eric Lawrence (13:01.403)
It is, it is. Could you actually talk to us a little bit about the, this model that you've been mentioning, just kind of like what, what does it stand for? Cause I know it's, it's an acronym, but, what does that course look like for somebody that you're taking it through?
Cesar Viana Teague (13:08.508)
Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (13:12.446)
Sure. Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (13:18.768)
sure, yeah, so I'm building the course actually as we speak and it's a five module because A, P, E, E, E is for, A is for analyze and assess, the P is for planning, first E is for execute and then the evaluate and then exit or evolve. And so the A, the analyze and assess piece is really analyzing, you do a SWOT analysis, you're doing stakeholder interviews and
Michael Georgiou (13:22.136)
Nice.
Cesar Viana Teague (13:46.546)
Gathering the information and gleaning from there. Okay, what's what's really going on? Where are we aligned? Where are the gaps and and then doing some from there some change impact and now in readiness for the change as part of that analyze and assess piece now that informs the planning and when I say planning I'm talking about what are the objectives strategies and tactics that comprise the plan of What are we gonna do on this? You know, what are this?
strategies we're going to implement usually it's about you know let's say four strategies or so and and then the tactics the day-to-day week-to-week activities that are going we're going to execute on and so the execution is really about executing on the strategy and the tactics right that e and then we're evaluating it on a monthly quarterly basis what's happening what do we need to tweak and adjust and then
Overall, in the end, when you're doing your exit and evolution, you're really getting some feedback on what have we learned from this project? What we going to, what are we, what did we do well? And what are we going to do differently next time? And I'm very big on saying differently as opposed to better, because when you do something better, you get an incremental gain. When you do something differently, there's a chance you'll get an exponential gain. But.
Michael Georgiou (15:12.024)
Okay.
Cesar Viana Teague (15:12.112)
when you're doing something differently, it inherently requires the change. And everybody talks about, you look at their values, right? You see innovation. Well, innovation requires risk. But if your culture is not such that you accept risk, people fail, they get reprimanded or whatever, that's not really a culture that's empowering the innovation. And so...
Michael Georgiou (15:19.094)
Yeah. Yep.
Michael Georgiou (15:29.697)
Hahaha
Michael Georgiou (15:36.566)
It's almost kind of productive. It's like a counterproductive value in a way. It's like you're willing to put it on your marketing material and talk about it. It might sound good and look good, but you actually got to be willing to, to internalize it and take on the, one of the biggest elements with, with, innovation is risk, right? You got to be willing to risk things. Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (15:54.002)
Huge. Huge. It's so easy to say, but you really have to have the Edison 9999 times that didn't work and the 10,000 times that did. Well, were those failures? Well, a lot of people will view those others as failures because you failed to make the bulb work along the way. Well, yes, but there were really iterations and learning points to make it work.
But that's not really a failure then. So to me, failing is when you stop trying. Pure and simple.
Michael Georgiou (16:29.902)
Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, know, it's interesting, you know, because one of the things you said earlier in this episode was, you know, talking about resistance and even getting decision makers, stakeholders to buy into something. Let's just say, you know, it could be like, you know, one of the hardest things about implementing, for example, a new software or system in an organization.
you know, whether it's a CRN ERP, you talked about that quite a few times and an AI tool maybe is getting people to actually use it, right? It can be implemented, but if you're having 1 % of the people internally that are using it, it's very counterintuitive, it's counterproductive, it's not gonna be effective in the company. It's not gonna provide any value. So like my question is in terms of that, what do you see as the biggest reason people resist change?
And how can leaders start building buy-in early on in that process?
Cesar Viana Teague (17:33.096)
The biggest reason is because people, like I was saying earlier, they do not understand the purpose and what's in it for them for the change. Why are we doing this? What's the vision and mission around this change? Am I bought into it? And how is it going to affect me and my job? You have to answer those three questions upfront. And in order to do that as a leader, you have to be an authentic leader.
Michael Georgiou (17:39.256)
Okay.
Cesar Viana Teague (17:59.142)
And an authentic leader requires a certain amount of transparency, EQ, and CQ, emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence. That's part of my research I did at the Chicago School Professional Psychology, right, as part of my PhD in organizational leadership. This is about this merging of those. So you have to do those things in order to gain the trust of people who want to come go along with you. It's like you're climbing Mount Everest.
Michael Georgiou (18:07.916)
Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (18:28.08)
and you want to climb on areas with some, with a leader who kind of know a Sherpa and some people who know the way that if you're going to get to 10,000 the base camp, you may not even get past 10,000 foot base camp. You may end up being stuck there for a while before you can even make progress. But why are we doing this?
Michael Georgiou (18:33.262)
Okay.
Michael Georgiou (18:40.707)
Yep.
Michael Georgiou (18:47.362)
Yeah, you're not gonna go to Camp One, Camp Two. You're gonna stay on base camp and that's it. Maybe even head back to the airfield.
Eric Lawrence (18:51.973)
Yeah.
Cesar Viana Teague (18:52.54)
Yeah, yeah. for sure. And then if you meet, if you keep on making it up there, you know, you may not make it back at all, which has happened a lot to people. They just didn't make it back for obviously other reasons, whether, but you still have to be bought in, in order to take the journey. It's a journey. Change management is that journey. How are we as leaders, empowering the folks on the journey? How are we informing them? How are we communicating to them?
the why behind it and more importantly, how are we inviting them to co-design that change to begin with, which is part of the strategy that I use that a lot of, you know, 70 % of change initiatives don't succeed. Well, it's because they're not, people aren't bought in and the people aren't bought in because you can't show up and say, hey, Michael, Eric, here's what we're gonna be doing.
Michael Georgiou (19:27.598)
Mm-hmm.
Cesar Viana Teague (19:48.734)
we're going to be implementing this new Salesforce CRM system, make it happen, go run with it. Then it becomes a giant paperweight, which is what happened with the CRM systems back earlier on. And so they're not using it appropriately because they didn't quite understand what to do and why are we doing this, et cetera. So you got to start there first, very important, and that's what I help people to do.
Michael Georgiou (20:13.698)
And I guess one last question here before we kind of finish up and in, you know, maybe like in a minute or so explaining, you know, in terms of AI, right? How do you see AI reshaping your approach and what you do every day, right? Helping these organizations. How do you kind of reshape your approach to change management and what should leaders be doing differently as automation or, you know, you, talked about, what was the other one? It automation and augmentation.
Cesar Viana Teague (20:43.56)
Yes.
Michael Georgiou (20:44.492)
Yep, that's it. love that kind of a balance of both. How does that become more embedded in business through AI from your experience?
Cesar Viana Teague (20:47.55)
Hmm.
Cesar Viana Teague (20:51.57)
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing people say this from Benioff, know, from Salesforce to other leaders. saying that, you know, the idea is to free people up of the lower value activities that AI can now take care of so that we're doing higher value activities to add more value to the company, to our clients, to our communities. That's really what it's going to come down to. I mean, I use AI for doing my research.
Michael Georgiou (21:16.526)
Mm.
Cesar Viana Teague (21:21.04)
It's making my research and reporting a lot faster. And then you heard about agent force at Salesforce where we were driving a lot of the customer service that's being taken care of online for the people who want the fast answers. So you can spend more time with the folks who need more in-depth conversations and all that. Otherwise, how are you going to manage that? And so that's really what it's about. And how are we doing that as a company?
to empower the folks in our company to then be doing higher value tasks. And so that's why I think that's what we're taking a look at in terms of the change piece and how we can help.
Michael Georgiou (21:54.445)
Yeah.
Michael Georgiou (22:03.058)
I love it. Yeah. I know you, I know you got to run. Cesar, thank you so much. We appreciate it. think even in just, you know, 20 something minutes, we got a lot of value, a lot of golden nuggets in there and might even have you on the show again. There's a lot of things I want to pick your brain on. I think it's very interesting, honestly. We deal with a lot with what you're talking about and just kind of in our journey. And we're very grateful for you to be here. Thank you so much for everything and.
Cesar Viana Teague (22:18.419)
Thank you.
Cesar Viana Teague (22:25.543)
Yeah.
Sure. Thank you.
Michael Georgiou (22:31.439)
We'll see you soon, okay? Thank you so much again. All right. Thank you. All right. My name is Michael Georgiou, your host from Tales from the Pros with my co-host, Eric Lawrence, interviewing Cesar Viana Teague Thank you so much, everyone. Until next time, take care. Thank you.
Cesar Viana Teague (22:33.32)
Thank you. Take care. Thank you, Michael, Eric. Enjoy. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Eric Lawrence (22:34.151)
Thank you, Caesar.