Get Started Today as a Champion of Change

One phrase I keep hearing from companies I’ve been (virtually) speaking for in the last few months is “transformation”. Digital transformation, business process transformation, whole company transformation – it’s all another way of saying companies are undergoing change. And change is hard (maybe that’s why one of the best-selling books on change is Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard).

So, if change is the new normal (and I think it always was), what role can you play? What role will you play? Use this Champion of Change Framework and select a few areas where you can make a difference this year. Then think about which roles you are best suited to -- visionary, convener, storyteller, supporter, amplifier, learner, or listener, that will help you stand out along the way.

Do You Have a Change Champion Mindset?

Being a champion of change begins with having a change champion mindset. This starts with adopting a growth mindset -- being willing to believe that what we know and what we're good at is not fixed to where we are today but instead can always be expanded. Then we need to adopt a promotion vs. a prevention orientation -- focusing on our likelihood of success in the future (rather than our concerns about the risks ahead). When we believe -- and push others to believe -- that we can achieve success because we've already had a lot of achievements in our past, we build the momentum needed to build a flywheel effect, a necessary precursor to sustainable change. How might you build your change champion mindset this year?

Are You Engaged in Making Change Possible?

Imagine that the phone rings and it's one of your colleagues asking for your help redesigning the report that you both hate completing every month or the reimagining the standing Monday meeting that you both dread. Do you proactively engage with some fresh perspectives and ‘what would that make possible’ language, or reactively protest that you have too much on your plate and no one's going to listen to your ideas anyway? People who are engaged in making change possible are not just driving their own change initiatives, they are supporting those that others are championing as well, taking a Yes, AND approach vs. a No, BUT attitude to change. (Want to learn this technique? Take an improv class or just practice saying yes, and every time someone suggests a new idea.) What might you do to show up as a change champion every day?

Are You Helping Your Team Accept Change?

Earlier in my career, I had a mentor, Frank Greene, who taught me that leadership was really about Vision, Relationships and Execution (VRE) and the best leaders were good at all three. Starting with vision, what can you do to help your team understand both the big picture and the why behind the change that's coming? How might you strengthen your relationships with them by listening and incorporating their ideas into the change underway? Finally, too often we forget to take things OFF of people’s plates rather than just putting more things ON. What will you stop doing, and (more importantly) stop expecting them to do, this year? Below is a great framework for getting started. How might you help your team not just survive but thrive during the change underway?

Will You Make Your Expertise Available?

Whether you’re an expert in finance, technology, sales, project management or elsewhere, the likelihood is that your specific expertise and perspective would be helpful as part of the transformation ahead. Whether you decide to bring that expertise to bear is the real question. One woman I know built her career at a major consulting company by listening to the briefing calls between the company’s CEO and major clients and then identifying what skills would be needed to address the trends they were talking about. She then went out and got the training she needed to be ready for what was ahead. When her firm was ready to start addressing this new trend, she was at the forefront and was often asked to be a part of or even lead the new team. How can you bring your expertise to become an ally in any change underway? How can you build your expertise for what's ahead?

Can You Operate Outside Your Silo?

When Carol Bartz was CEO of Autodesk, she instituted a practice of convening monthly cross-functional two-day off campus retreats where one member from each team across the company -- from the cleaning staff to the engineering team -- would be selected to participate. Through a series of shared experiences and trust-building exercises, the employees got to know and rely on each other. This helped break down the typical silos and gave people someone they knew that they could call from another department to break down barriers, slow down the finger-pointing and decrease the blaming that typically arose when something went wrong. How will you drive the cross-functional alignment necessary for change?

Will You Lead a Working Group?

During the pandemic, my client Lynne Oldham, the Chief People Officer of Zoom, co-created the FLEXWORK Coalition with industry leaders from Palo Alto Networks, Box, Splunk, and Uber 'to focus on the future of work and accelerate the development of new employee-centric work practices around employee choice and flexibility.' Working groups like this, whether they are cross-functional within one organization or cross-industry like this one, have the power to drive change far more effectively than a bunch of siloed efforts. By convening those who most have the capacity to create change, the willingness to proactively try new approaches, and the openness to listening to and learning from one another, we become true champions of change. What role will you play as a participant or leader of a working group this year?

[The one caveat to this that I’d like to note is that it is not an effective strategy to look around a non-diverse company and identify the one or two lower-level people of color and put them in charge of the brand new diversity initiative – on top of their day job, for no extra pay. These people do not need the extra burden of trying to get the people with power to change their behaviors in order to adopt a new DE&I initiative. The burden of change in DE&I initiatives should be squarely on the shoulders of those at the top, not those at the bottom of the organization who are struggling to cope with the effects of a broken system.]

Can You Help Important Stakeholders Prepare for Change?

I started my career in the technology industry as a product manager for early consumer software -- productivity products like Print Shop (used to create greeting cards and signs) and BannerMania (used to create very cool banners). Both of these product's success relied on our customer's ability to print their finished creations on their home printers, which in turn relied on their ability to keep those printers up to date with the latest printer drivers. One day, I sat in with the tech support team that supported my products, to listen in on the calls they got from our customers. It was eye-opening to understand that a small change we made in our software or that a printer manufacturer made in their printer drivers could (and did) have enormous repercussions in these customer's ability to get their creations to print successfully. It was a small lesson but it's stayed with me.

As an effective steward of change, helping your stakeholders adapt to what’s ahead should be job one. Yet, it is often left to those with the least information and the least power – salespeople, customer service reps, etc. – to communicate the changes underway. And when stakeholders (including customers) have relevant criticisms or pushback, that message rarely gets back to those with the power to go in a new direction. This is an area ripe for differentiation in any transformation underway. How might you help redefine who and how you'll prepare stakeholders for the change underway? How might you ensure that you are listening to your stakeholders along the way?

What Will You Showcase and Amplify?

Sometimes the transformation we are engaged in is part of a larger societal, industry sector, business process, regional or other transformation – and we are just one small part of a bigger whole. When we use thought leadership techniques like amplifying and storytelling, we can help everyone see the bigger picture. Another useful technique is to tie our efforts to a larger trend (ex: sustainability, diversity and inclusion, social justice, technology adoption).

When my client Van Ton-Quinlivan was working in the utility industry, she found she gained far more attention and momentum for the initiatives she was driving when she could talk about them as part of Obama's 'Green Jobs Initiative' then underway at the national level, rather than just a single company effort. This created a much larger audience for her message and opened the door to new collaborations and partnerships across her industry and beyond that would never have come about otherwise. Will you showcase and champion change in your industry/community/region or beyond? How can you tie to the important trends and national initiatives underway?

Let’s Get Started Today

Being a true champion of change can open doors to new ways of working, new understanding and a new set of relationships. It can also help us build a brand as a trusted ally, a role model and a visionary. Think about how you might approach change across all 8 dimensions mentioned here – then pick two or three where you’ll focus your energy this year, including one which might be a stretch assignment of your own making.

You can actually start from any point in the circle (not just at step 1). When one of my clients, Stephanie Hsieh, was hired as the Executive Director of Biocom LA, she began championing change in her industry (starting at step 8) – and then worked backwards from there. My friend Pamela Baker, a managing director at Workday, has focused very effectively on the fourth step, building out her expertise as a change agent until she is seen as the first person you call in her organization when you are ready for someone able and willing to tackle the tough stuff.

Any approach is equally valid so choose the one that energizes you and get started. How will you be a change champion this year? Which techniques will you use to drive change in your organization and beyond? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Denise Brosseau is a thought leadership strategist, consultant and speaker. She often works with leaders and their teams who are driving change initiatives in their organizations or industries. She is also the author of the best-seller Ready to Be a Thought Leader? and she has two popular courses on thought leadership on LinkedIn Learning. Learn more at www.thoughtleadershiplab.com.