Building a Successful Change Network
One of the most valuable tools at the disposal of a Change Management Consultant is the Change Champion and Change Agent Network they create at the beginning of an engagement. When stood up properly, this group can make your change effort a success in so many ways and can also lead to sustainment of the change within the client organization for years to come. During a recent engagement with a large manufacturing company, I was fortunate enough to have created one of the better Change Champion networks I have assembled in some time. Just prior to my departure, as I met with these 6 champions for the last time, I was really interested in hearing their opinion on why we had been so successful. There were 3 key takeaways from that conversation
- The correct people were chosen
- Each Change Champion saw this as an “opportunity” to grow professionally
- They were personally invested in the success of the project
For this particular effort (company moving from Lotus Notes to Office 365), within my first week on site, I was fortunate enough to be able to conduct a very detailed stakeholder analysis and learn a great deal about the organization. Once complete, I reached out to the senior leadership team and asked for 15 minutes in their next meeting to discuss not only my view of OCM, but to also get their buy-in on my approach to creating a change champion network for this effort. Being a global organization, I knew that selecting the correct people would be critical to make sure there was coverage across the globe. I narrowed the organization to 6 unique divisions and reached out to the senior project team member in each of those divisions and explained what I was looking for.
- Outgoing and respected among their peers
- Willing to accept new ways of doing things
- Able understand not only the change at hand, but how they could help make that change more effective.
- Willing to create a change network to cover their organization
Once the 5 Change Champions were selected/appointed, I met with them to discuss their role and expectations. Over the next 3 weeks, we worked to create their change networks, as well as continue to arm them with the knowledge and tools to continue to better understand the change effort as a whole. All of them quickly saw the “Big Opportunity” and each was working on a daily basis to spread the word about the effort and to get others involved.
The final point takeaway, is to make certain each change champion is “personally invested” in the success of the project. While initially I felt some concern about all of them basically being in the IT organization and there being no representatives from the business, I learned that the IT organization as a whole had a bad reputation for not communicating well and for not providing adequate training, two things each of them wanted to change. All Change Champions eagerly attended every weekly meeting and all were always proactively reaching out within their organization to promote the project and growing their individual change networks. All 5 of them created global change networks within their organization and invited me to give presentations on OCM and their role in the current project.
There were many other factors at play which made this particular team successful, but I feel the three highlighted above are the most important. Feedback from across the organization from executives to end users, was overwhelmingly positive and mentioned on more than one occasion how this project had gone against the norm in a very positive way. I learned as much from them as they ultimately learned from me and I know I will carry it forward to future engagements.
Change starts with the OCM Lead, but to be truly impactful, it must end with a strong change champion network, full of Change Champions/Agents who are the correct people, see the role as an opportunity to make a difference and who are personally invested in the success of the project or change effort.
