Rising Stars: Future Investment
A Change Agent Team can be an effective, low cost/high
return resource available to most organizations. More importantly, it’s a way
to invest in the next generation of talent inside your company and elevate your
human resources commitment.
You can draw from the organization's mid-level “rising star”
talent pool and create a team to address critical challenges facing your
business. The results work for everyone:
- It’s an
effective method to inject change management skills in your employees’
development process—an investment with significant long-term payoff.
- The
organization gains fresh ideas to address important business issues, often
backlogged on the corporate “to-do” list.
- Team members
get valuable problem solving skills along with exposure to senior management.
The result is a morale boost and level of enthusiasm not easily achieved in most
companies.
Simple steps can help establish this value-added program:
· Identify a key
issue facing your organization requiring some degree of change in the way you
do business—an issue or
task that’s been identified but never made its way up the priority list.
· Select a four
to six member multi-disciplinary team from your “rising star” employee pool, every
company has them. Assign them the task of drilling-down and defining what needs
to happen, and have them create a “promise” around their deliverable. Next come
an action plan and project scope that identifies what it’s going to take in
terms of resources and managing the change process to completion.
· Provide the Change
Agent Team (CAT) with an advisor or mentor from senior management to act as a
guiding resource (vs. decision-maker or rule-maker).
· Allow the team
adequate time on a regular basis to manage the process and draw upon internal
expertise to achieve their objectives. In other words, understand that they
have a day-job and set them up for success.
· Require
informal sessions with management to act as a project “gut check”. This will
help build internal relationships by allowing the team to have face-time with management
and break down communication silos. This senior-level “exposure factor” will
serve to motivate and challenge CAT members.
· Recognize and
whenever possible, reward the team's accomplishments once they've successfully
completed their tasks.
Change Agent Teams can emerge as a training and development tool, project
management resource and focal point for innovation. They establish a driver for
change that has long-lasting effects as team participants grow within the
organization. It’s a low cost, visible investment with big payoff for the
company and your employees.
