Who will change your organisation?
It is my experience that transformative, sustainable change is driven not by technology or even by ideas, but by people. Although it isn’t necessarily management who hold the most influence. So which people am I talking about?
When I worked with Just — helping them emerge from M&A as a beacon brand — we leveraged people to drive the radical change needed. We recruited a team of internal influencers dubbed the Just Makers to embed the new brand and shape the future of the business.
This bottom-up approach to change led to the merger savings target of £40m being achieved 12 months early. And at a time when people’s roles were at risk, staff engagement actually went up.
So who were these people? How did we find them? And what are the conditions required for them to succeed?
I caught up with the Just Makers to ask them — who is needed to drive change?
1. A Few Optimists
In any business, M&A creates a culture of existential crisis. Is this the company I came to work for? Post-merger, most people were resigned to this. But some, isolated in their individual silos, wanted to make positive change.
We found them. How? By announcing the Just Makers programme. This gave them a beacon to flock to. It didn’t need to be a fully-scoped project — it just activated their optimism.
If your teams are pessimistic, you haven’t called out the optimists yet.
2. A Charismatic Leader
Just Makers were a grassroots group. But the team still required a ‘charismatic leader’ — setting their purpose, acting as a bridge between the Just Makers and the Exec.
This person is their leader — not their manager. Their crucial role is to liaise with Influencers’ line managers, emphasising the importance of the mission, the developmental benefits to participants and negotiating ring-fenced time to participate.
Find an ambitious diplomat type, and task them with guiding the team.
3. An Aligned Leadership
The Exec must show Influencers that the mission they’re set really matters.
Just Makers were tasked with bedding in the rebrand. This was a real project. knew it was a business imperative, with funding and objectives.
The Exec launched this mission, handing it over in person to the Just Makers. Throughout, they were open and honest about challenges facing the business. This helped the Makers to focus their efforts on what would help.
In short - leaders influenced but did not lead the programme. This made it compelling, and enabled Just Makers to get things done when push came to shove.
Change works best when it is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but both.
4. Everyone else (including naysayers)
Working directly with a group of Influencers creates momentum, but step change occurs at moments when everyone is exposed to the changes happening.
Behavioural scientists might call this the social proof or the tipping point. We call it an ‘accelerator moment’.
Just Makers talked about how an all-employee event in Brighton neutralised naysayers across the business. And a summit that mixed customers with the Exec hammered home just how much needed to change.
Pick up the calendar, and plan a moment to accelerate change.
So, what makes an Influencer?
We thought you could profile an ideal Influencer. But the truth is that whilst our Influencers share a hidden optimism, they are extroverts, introverts, managers, frontline service people, blues, reds, greens and yellows…and they’re all the more effective for their diversity.
It isn’t individuals that matter. It’s the team.
Finding this diverse team, taking them out of their silos and bringing them together under a real mission, and giving them the permission and tools to do what needs to be done. This is the heart of the Influencers programme — its people.
Big thanks to the Just Makers who attended: Riccardo, Aden, Jill, Venecia, Jon and Gayle.
To find out more about how our Influencer programme could transform your business, get in touch with Executive Partner Jenny Burns.
