The following is adapted from No One’s Listening and It’s Your Fault

As with many things in life, it’s much easier to lead a major organizational change when you don’t go it alone. You want champions for your cause—influencers who will support your efforts and amplify your message throughout the organization. 

I call these people change champions, and the good news is that you likely already have them within your ranks. All you need to do is identify and deploy them in support of your initiative, and you’ll reap the benefits of having an army of supporters pushing your project forward. 

Here’s how to find change champions within your company and start building momentum with them that will make your project unstoppable. 

Who Are Change Champions?

Have you ever wanted to hear an interesting detail from an insider? Perhaps something leaders wouldn’t stumble upon on their own or successfully encourage people to disclose in a company-wide survey? 

Change champions provide those kinds of insights. They are key influencers within your organization—people who can represent their peers, report on the pulse of the organization, and amplify your initiative’s message. 

Recruiting change champions to your cause is a highly impactful tactic that allows individuals within your organization to benefit from social approval and the momentum gained through peer-to-peer influence. Change champions demonstrate commitment to the change initiative, increase the speed of adoption, personalize communications, and provide valuable feedback from their peers.

They’re the eyes, ears, and voice of your initiative, and with their help, you can effectively be everywhere in your organization at once. But before we get ahead of ourselves, you need to find and recruit your change champions. 

Who Are Your Change Champions?

When identifying change champions, consider individuals who are well respected and trusted in the organization. The ideal change champion will have influence, with or without a lucrative, prestigious job title. The person will be sought out for insights, direction, and information. This is also a great opportunity to include high-potential individuals in your organization in need of development opportunities. 

The selection process is important and needs to be inclusive of the impacted stakeholder groups. It is not necessary for change champions to agree with the change you are leading. In most cases, it is beneficial to also include individuals who oppose the work, so you can gain perspective into their resistance. Individuals who resist the change could offer you the most valuable information to help others in your organization overcome challenges and adapt to the new way of work.

Helping change champions understand what is expected of them will clarify how you plan to engage them. What you want to address with change champions is the expected time and length of their participation. Most people can commit to an extracurricular activity outside their day-to-day job if it’s well defined and within a reasonable amount of time. 

If the demands are high, you will have a hard time engaging the right participants, so it’s important to have easy rules of engagement and make good use of their time.

Deploying Your Change Champions

Once you’ve identified and recruited your change champions, it’s time to deploy them and get to work. Let’s consider the typical project management life cycle, which may include the following phases: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closeout. 

The most optimal time to assemble and deploy a change champion group is during the planning phase of the initiative. By then, you would have created a structured approach of how the work will get done, and you may have information to share and feedback to gather. 

The frequency of the change champion meetings depends on the rhythm of your organization. Most groups meet monthly or bimonthly, depending on the project duration. Clearly defining the role and expectations upfront will ensure that you gain momentum from the start. 

Before long, you’ll be collecting valuable insight and information with the help of your change champions. And as you’ll discover, something beautiful takes place when communication flows from within an organization and quenches the thirst of your people. Equip change champions with the appropriate sound bites, and they will carry the message further than you alone ever could.

For more advice on improving organizational change, you can find No One’s Listening and It’s Your Fault on Amazon.

PAM MARMON is the CEO of Marmon Consulting, a change management consulting firm that provides strategy and execution services to help companies transform.