Tapping the power of hidden influencers | McKinsey & Company.
Published earlier this year in the McKinsey Quarterly, this is a great article. Confirming an assertion we make in Engaging Change, the article identifies very succinctly that:
‘Employee resistance is the most common reason executives cite for the failure of big organizational-change efforts. Winning over skeptical employees and convincing them of the need to change just isn’t possible through mass e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, or impassioned CEO mandates. Rather, companies need to develop strong change leaders employees know and respect—in other words, people with informal influence.’
The imperative for the change practitioner to be able to identify and then secure the support and commitment of those who exercise informal influence or power is something we discuss in detail in Engaging Change. If key influencers, many of whom act as ‘nodes’ within one or more informal networks, are not committed to the change you are endeavouring to make, then your ability to communicate and engage with people from all areas of the organisation becomes questionable. This, in turn, raises questions about the likelihood of the change being successful. The article also suggests, once key influencers have become engaged with the change initiative, that one way to sustain this engagement is through frequent interaction and collaboration between individual influencers and change teams. It is through these interactions and the subsequent feedback, that the change leader is able to ‘join the dots’ and monitor the progress of change. The ability to ‘join dots’ is something we refer to as sense-making.
engaging change 