People need to trust who is leading the change to help understand the reason for change and trust that they will be successful. The following people are needed:

• Senior leaders who support change
• An actual change team with training in change management
• Someone managing the project
• Someone managing the communications
• Specialists who know the changing process (IT/finance) or people (HR)
• Early adopters or advocates from the operations/business

An effective change leader does not need to be the top leader in the hierarchy. It needs to be someone who can influence, and people listen to.

For change to be successful, it needs to be tailored to the individual by building out a “what’s in it for me” approach:

• Identify different types of stakeholders based on how the change impacts them.
• Determine unique resistance for each stakeholder group and an appropriate mitigation plan for each resistance point.
• Develop a communications plan per stakeholder group (medium, frequency, messenger).
• Create a training plan per each stakeholder group (content, medium, instructor).

The change team themselves may be a group, as are senior leaders, people leaders, and HR.

It is essential that communication happens in two ways. That is, there is top-down communication but also bottom-up feedback. To make this happen:

• Default communication to live discussion (e.g. face-to-face)
• Communicate frequently and consistently
• Ensure you talk to the quiet people
• Utilize existing structures/meetings to reduce adding additional work/change
• Be positive but realistic
• Place messages in the larger context, but tailor them to the individual
• Stay aligned with other leaders/departments/functions