Originally written December 15, 2022—
There’s a phrase that I have adopted when thinking about the role of leaders in their sponsorship of organizational change. Do not confuse a person who is in a power position with an influential leader. In the case of a change practitioner, we seek to identify specifically influential people, which we commonly refer to as sponsors.
Sponsors are the ones that other people who must change looked to for signals about how real the change initiative is … or isn’t. They reside at all levels of the organization and are crucial to the success of any change initiative. And sometimes you find some of the most powerful people are not in formal leadership positions and they can have a strong influencer role in how a organizational change effort succeeds… or doesn’t. I would argue that people in powerful positions can get compliance due to their position, it is the influential sponsor that engenders true and lasting commitment.
This post is intended to stretch the change practitioner’s thinking to identify which types of leaders are you working with and to develop a rough framework for how to distinguish between the two types.
Why Does Understanding the difference Matter?
Knowing the composition of the leaders who will be sponsors for the change can inform the practitioner about the possibilities as well as the inherent constraints present to the initiative’s success.
Story time…
Example of a Failed Power Position
There was a change initiative intended to create a matrix organization for the Finance, HR and IT between the subsidiary organization and the parent company. Leaders of these functions at the parent “declared” that these functions would now directly report into the parent company and not the subsidiary. Matters had been handled locally for decades through multiple owners in the past. Employees at all levels in the subsidiary were both confused and resentful. Over the following 18 months, subsidiary functions communicated less and less with the parent company, rogue initiatives cropped but, only the minimum was delivered. Matters got so disconnected at one point a key leader in the matrix left the parent organization and didn’t even inform their subsidiary direct report.
Influential Leader Getting Things Done
Here’s an alternate example. In the same subsidiary organization there was an initiative to double product output in a 12-month period while minimizing cost increases. There was a Sr. Director, who was going to have to double the output of his department without increasing the size of his staff. He told his peers at a regularly-scheduled management meeting that he committed to doubling his output without one additional headcount over the next 12 months.
Over this period, the Senior Director checked in with each of his four team members every day, who were spread across 9 different sites. Every morning he called each of them, when they were together at the same site at the end of the day he gathered them to informally debrief from the day. His team made not a dime more money and worked sunrise to sunset each day, often 6 or 7 days a week. 12 months later, that same team of four delivered on that promise for increased outputs with not one resignation. Without that level of delivery, the business would have gone bankrupt.
How can such dichotomies live in the same organization?
One of the most essential concepts to understand is the difference between a person in a power position vs. influential person. Is the person able to influence a group of people because of the position that they are in or because of the way in which they lead.
Here’s some rough guidelines to apply when trying to distinguish between the two:
| People in powerful positions | Influential People |
| In that person’s presence, people act in the desired ways, then go back to old ways when that person is not present | In situations of uncertainty, people literally or figuratively “look to them” for guidance |
| People “do the minimum”, just enough not to get in trouble or to comply | When the speak, others stop talking |
| There’s often a command-and-control mindset, people are constantly checking in to see if what they are doing is in line with the change | When the set direction, people start to act differently |
| They get results but can often be very resource intensive and require constant monitoring | People continue acting differently even when that person is not present |
| The titles held by these individual don’t always imply formal leadership |
The role of the change practitioner is to become adept at understanding where to place each of the leaders involved in a change initiative into one of the following categories:
| Power Position / Not Influential | Powerful Position / Influential |
| Non Power Position / Not Influential | Non Power Position / Influential |
This exercise would first require writing down a set of criteria that would be use to classify each person. That set of criteria to be useful would need to be agreed to by the change management team and at minimum the most senior sponsorship of the change initiative. Such a framework now becomes a common frame of reference to discuss the type of sponsor behaviors present (or absent) and to anticipate the impact to achieving desired results.
Why Does Understanding the Difference Matter?
In your as a change practitioner, think about the people whom you will be in service to on a change effort. How would you answer the following questions about them:
- What are the characteristics that the sponsor needs to posses for the change effort to have the chance of success?
- Do you know the feature that when absent will make success very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve success?
- How malleable is your leader to adopting new ways of working and open to being coach by you?
- Are you empowered with that leader to influence their thinking and ways of sponsoring the change?
Up Next
In the next post I will talk through some of the characteristics that differentiate change efforts and also share some criteria to consider adopting as you evaluate the people who will be looked to for leading and delivering the desired change.