Influencing the Influencers

Today, although technology is enabling us to find influencers with more ease, Voce Communications' Manuel says companies (and executives) often find it hard to engage with such people. His advice is to listen first, then talk second. Listening and observing can be difficult and neither typically comes naturally to executives, he concedes.

"There are a number of ways - both online and offline - that execs can talk with influencers to share their opinions and engage in conversation," Manuel says. "The easiest way is to start a personal blog. Jonathan Schwartz at Sun is a great example of how one executive is using his blog to dissect important issues and influence industry opinion toward Sun. Bob Lutz at General Motors is another. Building a community around a personal brand (via a blog) is a tremendous way to engender support and cultivate relationships with online influencers. Over time, online activities transition to offline ones where everything from casual meet-ups to more formal advisory groups can be formed to help maintain a steady dialogue and, well, 'influence the influencers'."

So although listening and observing is not so easy for many executives, once those executives take the time to understand the dynamics of online communities and relationships, they are far better equipped to do what they do best - talking.

With the right words, and sufficient stores of credibility, the CIO can then seek to counter any negative influences from outsiders. v

SIDEBAR: Top-Down, Bottom-Up

To implement change successfully CIOs must manage at the top and influence from the bottom

Neil Farmer, the managing director of UK company Chatsworth Change Consultancy, which advises organizations on how to use both managers and influencers to drive successful change, says CIOs are starting to understand the need to become influencers themselves - both within IT and across the organization - as the change agents for making change happen.

The idea is that in any organization, once the beliefs and energies of a critical mass of key influencers are engaged, conversion to a new idea will spread like an epidemic, bringing about fundamental change very quickly.

"Many have come to realize, too late, that they have over-emphasized the technical and operational aspects of their change programs at the expense of people," Farmer says. "More often than not, failure to handle effectively the human dimension of change has been the undoing of major projects as organizations run into problems they neither anticipated, nor know how to solve."

Farmer's company uses a very different approach to business change, which integrates many traditional change management best practices to form a coordinated approach that drives change through "influencers" as well as "managers".

He says the Influencer Balancer Technique (IBT) has been used in some of the most challenging change environments where business process outsourcing (BPO) has formed the backdrop for fundamental business change. BPO providers, such as Siemens, British Telecom and Xchanging, have used IBT to successfully implement hundreds of change projects involving organizational, process, systems and cultural change in UK organizations as diverse as Nationwide, National Savings, Harlow District Council, Liverpool City Council, Lloyds of London and Friends Provident.

IBT has three main characteristics. First, it accurately identifies influencers in all relevant areas across an organization (in contrast to traditional psychometric or "ask the change team and local managers" approaches that have a typically poor 30 percent accuracy record).

Second, IBT balances the use of managers and influencers in such a way that change governance is enhanced through control of both the formal and informal strands of change.

Third, IBT is highly flexible and can be used on a mix-and-match basis to drive effective change in a wide variety of organizational change situations. The approach is tailored to meet specific business requirements. Vision enhancement, change communications, staff support measurement through "tipping points", implementation sequencing, manager/influencer involvement in change, cultural training and support, progress measurement, benefits realization, and local career/succession planning are all options within the IBT change framework.

The IBT provides mechanisms that address both formal managers and informal influencers during change projects. It also "intercepts" smoothly with traditional change management and program/project management methods.

For example, business visions are extended, constrained and modified to include the views/insights of change-positive influencers. Appropriate influencers form the resources for what were traditionally called initiating and sustaining sponsors and pilot project staff. Staff communication/feedback mechanisms for the change program are built and operate using influencers. Similarly, influencer "pools" form essential "raw materials" for selecting new-world managers and early adopters of new systems, processes and ways of working.

By integrating a management (top-down) strand of change with an influencer (bottom-up) change thread, Farmer says most of the failings of traditional change management can be effectively overcome. Extensive research and experience suggest the chances of successful change increase from some 30 percent to almost 90 percent.

SIDEBAR: Three Steps to Image Adjustment

1.Make strategic choices. Making strategic decisions about projects and communicating them to the CEO will help bridge the rift between you, whether you or a previous CIO created it.

2.Propose new business opportunities. Finding opportunities to expand the business helps CIOs position themselves in a strategic light.

3.Promote your agenda. CIOs who don't participate in regular board or senior management team meetings should lobby for a 10-minute spot during those meetings to articulate their agendas and their business impact.