Synopsis “The cat’s on the roof” is a change management technique named after a joke. (Read the transcript or listen to the episode for the joke.) When you need to break bad news to someone, don’t surprise them. Prepare them for what they’re going to hear. The same is true in your business: if you want less pushback when you make a change, transition your team gradually if you can. In 2018, Dr. Misner published an article called “Why the Remote Meetings of the Future Will Be Face-to-Face” on Entrepreneur.com. He could see that online technologies were going to disrupt not just BNI but our entire concept of networking. At the time, he didn’t think BNI was going to make that transition until at least 2023, so it seemed like there was plenty of time to prepare. BNI Connect had introduced global referrals and the leadership team was aware that face-to-face online networking was coming. COVID-19 meant that BNI had to make the transition to video meetings sooner than expected, but those “Cat on the Roof” conversations meant that BNI was better prepared than a lot of businesses. And while in-person meetings aren’t going to disappear from BNI completely, the technology for remote meetings keeps getting better, and it’s likely we’ll see a hybrid model emerge over the course of the coming years. The Official BNI Podcast is sponsored by Misner Audio Programs. Complete Transcript of Episode 715 Priscilla:Hello everybody, and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. I’m Priscilla Rice, and I’m coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and the Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner. Hello Ivan, how are you? And where are you? Ivan:Well, I’ve been to recently Buffalo, New York and BNI China. Priscilla:Wow. Ivan:I just love being able to Zoom around the world and do events. Priscilla:Yeah, that’s great. Okay, you have to tell us what is this episode about? Ivan:“The Cat’s On the Roof.” It’s a change management technique that I talk about, that comes from, actually, a joke. So let me let me give a little information on it. I was talking to someone recently, and they had to announce something new to their team that, it was a gentleman, and he felt it would be perceived as bad. However, he also felt confident that it would lead to some great things afterwards. He was concerned about the initial perception and anticipated pushback from his team. And he believed that this would keep the team from moving forward to implement the changes. And I listened to his ideas, and I agreed with him that there would be pushback, and that, in fact, it was, a smart move to do what he was doing. So I told him to use “The Cat’s On the Roof” technique. And he asked me, “What is that?” So I shared this story with him. There were two brothers, and one was going to take a vacation. So that brother says to the other brother, “Can you look after my cat while I’m on vacation?” And the other brother says, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” And a week later, the brother comes back from vacation and says, “Hey, how’s my cat?” And the other brother says, “Oh, man, sorry, the cat’s dead.” The brother says, “What? What?” And the other one says, “Well, yeah, sorry, the cat died.