Tapping the power of hidden
influencers
A
tool social scientists use to identify sex workers and drug users can help
senior executives find the people most likely to catalyze—or
sabotage—organizational-change efforts.
Employee resistance is the most common reason executives cite for the failure
of big organizational-change efforts.
Winning over skeptical employees and convincing them of the need to change just
isn’t possible through mass e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, or impassioned
CEO mandates. Rather, companies need to develop strong change leaders employees
know and respect—in other words, people with informal influence. But there’s
one problem: finding them. How can company leaders identify those people
beforehand to better harness their energy, creativity, and goodwill—and thereby
increase the odds of success?
One way we’ve found is “snowball
sampling,” a simple survey technique used originally by social scientists to
study street gangs, drug users, and sex workers—hidden populations reluctant to
participate in formal research. These brief surveys (two to three minutes) ask
recipients to identify acquaintances who should also be asked to participate in
the research. Thus, one name or group of names quickly snowballs into more, and
trust is maintained, since referrals are made anonymously by acquaintances or
peers rather than formal identification.
In business settings, the
methodology is easily adapted to better understand the patterns and networks of
influence that operate below the radar.
Indeed, informal influencers exist in every organization, across industries,
cultures, and geographies. They are, simply put, people other employees look to
for input, advice, or ideas about what’s really happening in a company. They
therefore have an outsized influence on what employees believe about the
future, as well as on morale, how hard people work, and their willingness to
support—or resist—change.
Finding these employees is
relatively easy using snowball sampling. Companies can construct simple,
anonymous e-mail surveys to ask, for example: “Who do you go to for information
when you have trouble at work?” or “Whose advice do you trust and respect?” In
shop-floor and retail-store settings where workers don’t have ready access to
e-mail, companies can use anonymous paper surveys. By asking employees to
nominate three to five people (or more in very large organizations) who are
also surveyed, executives can quickly identify a revealing set of influencers
across a company. When the names of nominees start to be repeated—often, after
only three to four rounds—the survey can end.
The results are often surprising.
For example, in our work using the methodology in the aerospace,
financial-services, health-care, manufacturing, retailing, and trucking
industries (as well as in public-sector settings), we’ve found that influencer
patterns almost never follow the organizational chart. Informal influencers
exist at all levels of a company and aren’t easily identified or predicted by
role or tenure (although relatively few are senior company leaders, as might be
expected given their formal influence).
Moreover, we find that even when
company leaders believe they know who the influencers will be, they are almost
always wrong. At one large North American retailer, for instance, we compared a
list of influencers that two store managers created before the survey with its
actual results. Between them, the managers overlooked almost two-thirds of the
influential employees their colleagues named; worse, both managers missed three
of the top five influencers in their own stores. The retailer’s inability to recognize
its influencers is no anomaly; we’ve observed a similar pattern in every other
industry and geography we’ve studied.
Armed with a better sense of how
influence operates, senior executives can begin applying that knowledge in
useful ways. For example, they can encourage influencers to help communicate
necessary changes, convince skeptical employees of the need for change, or,
best of all, do these things as active architects of the program. Indeed, the
most powerful way to use hidden influencers is to bring them into such efforts
in the earliest stages and to get their input and guidance on planning and
direction—as well as help with execution. Changes made with the support of
these influential employees are vastly more likely to succeed in the long run
than changes delivered from on high.
Consider the experiences of an
aerospace company that used snowball sampling to jump-start an
operational-change program across its factory network and of a large
manufacturer that used this approach to support a major cultural-change
initiative. A close look at their experiences suggests four principles useful
for other organizations looking to tap into the power of hidden influencers.
1. Think broad, not deep. The manufacturer started with a pilot effort to identify
about two dozen influencers and later expanded it to include an additional 75
or so. The company sought influencers in a swath of regions, functions, and
roles (including frontline ones). The diversity of opinion and experience not
only helped provide energy and good ideas but also later proved important in
communicating the changes, in role-modeling them across the company, and in
combating skepticism.
While there is no formula to
determine how many influencers a company should include, the sample must be
wide enough to pull in a diversity of roles and perspectives. For the aerospace
company, this meant identifying 60 or so influencers working on different
product lines and in different roles (including middle managers) on the shop
floor. The goal is finding enough people with influence in enough roles to get
a high degree of connectivity across the company through a relatively small
number of connections (out of the total number possible). Some roles may prove
to be particularly important: a retailer we studied, for example, found that
its cashiers were generally well connected—most likely because they regularly
interacted with colleagues in many departments. Cashiers who were influencers
had considerable sway in the organization.
2. Trust, but verify. To build trust, participants at the manufacturer received
letters of invitation explaining the program’s goals, why these employees had
been nominated, and how the company wanted them to help. It took pains to make
the initiative voluntary—an approach the aerospace company also used. Having
influencers opt into change efforts builds trust and encourages high-quality
results. Indeed, many influencers will be eager to help and view the experience
as an honor worthy of their best efforts.
But goodwill dissipates quickly if
employees feel coerced. Before extending any invitations, the manufacturing
company discreetly vetted all participants with Human Resources and local
managers. Vetting the participants helps “screen in” influencers who are well
regarded by both peers and superiors,4 while acknowledging the reality that not
all influence is positive and not all influencers want change. Although “bad
eggs” should be screened out of important program roles, they still merit
attention—as valuable sources of insight about how to convert skeptics.
3. Don’t dictate—cocreate. Both the aerospace company and the manufacturer engaged their
influencers as thought partners in the change effort, not just as mouthpieces
for change. That’s an important point because the influencers’ informal
authority dwindles if they seem to be doing the bidding of management. The
manufacturer, for example, flew the participants out to a central location,
where they contributed to a multiday series of workshops. The aerospace company
invited influencers from different product lines to meet regularly for a
working lunch on the shop floor. In both cases, the participants were organized
in teams addressing themes they helped identify (for example, shop-floor
safety, incentives for employees to think more innovatively, and actions to
make the company more customer focused). Because both efforts required sustained
input from the participants, the meetings inspired and motivated them. As the
programs gathered steam, many of these employees helped to spread feelings of
empowerment in their usual roles as well.
4. Connect the dots. To boost the odds of lasting change, the manufacturer
created an online forum, supported by videoconferences, aimed at encouraging
the influencers to meet and support one another periodically. In an effort to
make these interactions as meaningful as possible, the company divided the
influencers into smaller, volunteer-led groups focused on common themes. This
approach not only helps to produce more tangible actions and outcomes but also
makes it easier for the groups to connect with colleagues working on similar
projects in other regions or business units. The participants’ sense of
community, and of themselves as change leaders, grows as they share best
practices, discuss new ideas, and address the inevitable challenges. The
company’s early commitment to in-person gatherings has made subsequent
interactions by e-mail, telephone, or videoconference far more meaningful. In
general, creating opportunities for influencers to meet in person usually pays
big dividends.
Building on the themes identified by
the manufacturer’s pilot group, the company’s full body of influencers is now
implementing more than 50 culture-based initiatives. Some improvements are
cross-cutting: for example, a new process to put employees’ creative ideas in
front of managers for rapid review and, if warranted, deployment. Others are
targeted at business-level improvements: for instance, a customer dashboard
that’s meant to increase collaboration and has already dramatically improved
sales. Thus far, several of the initiatives have led to promising increases in
orders, market share, and margins. The aerospace company has implemented
initiatives that helped to improve shop-floor safety, increase the number of
on-time customer deliveries, and reduce plant inventory costs.
While the programs at both companies
are works in progress, these early success stories have highlighted specific
activities and behavior that drive performance. They are thus helping the
companies to further articulate and accelerate the expected changes.
Employee-satisfaction scores have also improved sharply at both companies, in
large part thanks to increased levels of collaboration and empowerment.
byLili Duan, Emily Sheeren, and
Leigh M. Weiss
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/tapping_the_power_of_hidden_influencers?cid=other-eml-nsl-mip-mck-oth-1404
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