Choosing your Change Planning Team

This is the first post in a three-part series on Change and Transition by Linkage Regional Vice President, Mitchell Nash.

It’s time for change in your organization. Whether proactive or reactive, who you choose to help plan and orchestrate the change is very important.

When planning a change management team, don’t always choose the same cheerleaders, those who are always supportive of your decisions. Sometimes, people get tired of hearing from the same champions.

One thing you can do is to enlist the informal leaders in your organization—the individuals who other employees look to for direction, who they go to with questions, the ones that people quiet down and listen to when they begin to speak.

The idea makes sense in theory—to develop a strong change team, choose the right people—but how do you know who are the most influential or who has the right kind of resistant nature?

That’s where your managers and direct supervisors come into the picture. Determining who will be the best people for your change team is entirely determined by the relationships local managers and supervisors have with their people.

Direct leaders and managers should have their finger on the pulse of their groups and be able to say who has influence in the group. The most influential employees may not be the ones that you think of right away—they may be quiet or are not the first ones to speak up. However, when they do talk, people do listen to them. Help them identify some key messages you’d like them to communicate, then observe how they do; we believe that you’ll be quite surprised, and pleased with the results.

About the Author:

 Mitchell Nash is Regional Vice President at Linkage. He is responsible for the leadership consulting and professional services business in the western region of the United States. He has over 20 years of experience in the organizational development, training, executive coaching, and technology fields. His expertise is in assisting organizations to identify and organize their intellectual capital for outstanding results by using technological, organizational, and skill development solutions.