How to build Change Champion Networks that have an impact

[Music] Hey, community builders! I'm Annamaria and today I am talking with Change Management Consultant Lata Hamilton about the role that Change Champion Networks play in digital and culture transformation projects. In a world where no transformation should be rolled out without a network of champions, many organizations still struggle to make them work. Lata helps us unpack what makes this community successful and shares practical tips you can adopt immediately. She highlights the need for early and strategic engagement with Change Champions, the value of two-way feedback, and the importance of maintaining those networks for continuous improvement and community building long after the formal change process was rolled out and implemented. I hope you enjoy the conversation. [Music] Hello, hello everyone and hello Lata is great to have you on the Mapping Ties Podcast, Happy Friday. To kick us off, Lata, tell us a bit about yourself and the type of, let's say, organizational transformation that your work is focusing on. What is keeping you busy? Thanks so much, it's really good to be here. So for me, I'm an organizational change manager. I've got my own independent change management consultancy called Passion Pioneers and if you have any listeners who maybe aren't really across what organizational change management is, I love to sort of define it really simply. It's just moving people from doing things in one way in an organization to doing things in a new way in an organization and we sort of do that through three key areas, through communications, training and business readiness. You probably know what communications is and training and then business readiness is sort of like do people have everything that they need in order to do the change, do it successfully and keep doing it into the future. We don't just do it for the fun of it, we do it in order to realize the business benefits and so it can be any kind of organizational change and some of the changes that I've worked on for example have been everything from digital transformation. That's probably the thing that I work on the most, you know, often in an organization you might have a technology project, digital transformation project where they might be bringing in a new system, application platform and then you've got like a project manager and then the change manager comes in to help the people get informed, inspired, confident and ready. But I've also worked on operating little changes where they're changing the team structure, impacting roles, changing job titles and reporting lines. I've worked on global culture changes. I've worked on massive changes that have impacted 100,000 people's pay. I've worked on like office refurbishments and yeah just like so many like different workforce projects, so many different things in an organization that is changing can really be supported by organizational change management to really help people feel and get ready for the change and also to make the change more successful. I'm excited about that, Latta because it's the first semi-assamon on the podcast that comes from Deadlands and I know that communities in general are somewhat of an approach strategy tool, everything altogether that it's being quite often used in change management processes. So I'm excited to learn more from you and maybe we start there. What inspired you to focus on communities, means of practice as part of your work and where do they come in? Where do you pluck them in? Yeah, so I was thinking about this actually a little bit earlier today and I was thinking about this concept of community and I think naturally I've always been the type of person like since like high school probably either and like I was a pretty shy kid, but even in high school like I was the person who wanted to create those experiences to connect. People and so through high school university and then even into like my corporate career as a graduate so like one time I remember like it was just starting spring so it's just starting spring in Australia now and I was at high school and so like I arranged this like spring party with my friends and made these little like flower invitations and got each person to bring like a brightly colored, multi-colored food so that we could have like an experience together right and sort of welcome in spring and then when I was at university I used to run big dinner parties themed around a particular like like cuisine like a cultural cuisine like one time it was like Scandinavian another time it was Indonesian so like kind of unique cuisines and like 20 people would come over to my parents' house I'd always run it when like they were away overseas the 20 people would come over it was really chill like it was not like a house party or anything I was not that cool but like I would cook people would bring like wine and nibbles and we would just like sit and have a feast and like it was just so lovely and then even when I sort of got into a graduate program I was always looking at ways like how can I connect people how can I bring people together how can I make things meaningful and I guess kind of like create sort of lasting memorable experiences where people get connected and I remember like we would in the graduate program there's about 20 graduates over Australia and New Zealand and it was our one year anniversary and so like I looked up online like what's the present for like one year you know like of marriage and it was like paper so I went and got like stamps for that year didn't it mean like and gave each person a stamp to just kind of connect like I mentioned like kind of just connect people so I feel like I've always kind of done that and then when you get into change management like if people have got an experience with change management they probably have a pretty good experience of change champions and change champion networks it's something that's very like a tool attack that's very commonly used when leading and managing organizational change and it's where you get you know a cross section of people stakeholders like usually often people who are in the business in the business teams who are working in roles who can kind of represent an advocate for and input into the change but also help cascade and share that with their with their business teams and so it's it's a common tactic I think what happens a lot though in changes is that it's just assumed that the change champion network will be engaged that they will be advocates of the change that they will even know how to cascade things back to their team like some of these people aren't necessarily leaders even yet do you know like they might have some leadership qualities but maybe they aren't necessarily that influencer they could be a real technical expert and that's why they've been like often nominated as a change champion they could be somebody who is a little bit more of like the team go to person like an executive assistant or like a project coordinator or like somebody who's often they're helping everybody get ready and that's why they've been nominated and then other times it could be that they're just like they are influential and they do kind of their team trust them and respect them and they have got that level of influence and that's why they've been nominated so sometimes it's not necessarily that people automatically have that skill they don't necessarily know how to connect as a community together as a change champion network they might not know how to how to engage with each other and in some cases they can be more junior or just have never had exposure to how to really communicate and collaborate with each other because with a change champion network like the worst change champion networks are the ones that are like right we're going to give you this email or we're going to give you this briefing pack now go take it to your team actually you want your change champion network to be really engaged and to actually help you develop the solution so whatever it is that you're creating to give input and feedback to share feedback from their teams and the experience and the nuances of their teams and to really almost have like that that two way feedback as well as you know helping them up skill so that they actually do that role really well so that kind of like one side of the change communities I think the other side which maybe is a bit less relevant if you listen as they're not working in change management but the other side of change management communities is really actually around change managers themselves because it can be very often that you might be the only change manager working on a project you might be the only change manager sometimes in the whole organization so you know I've got a course and as part of the course I actually have a global community of change managers and I tell them that I'm like it's okay if you are the soul you know fly solo flying the flag for change management in your project in your business division in your organization in some cases even in your country because there's still some countries that don't have change management because I'm like at least we can come and connect here together as a global community and you'll always have that safe space to come back to and then saying that I've also created change management communities within industries within Australia that don't have that you know where you're likely to be the sole practitioner in an organization because it can be really lonely yeah fantastic okay so we've got now kind of two legs to different avenues to explore when you were mentioning the change champion networks that's very present for me because I where I work at the moment we have a lot of change champions and I'm currently directly supporting and involved in a community for AI change champions obviously AI it's a big thing now everywhere and I love to see this as a solution to the cocktail that people are adding to their AI obscuring strategy, communities in general. And on one side, they work with commuter practice, just to kind of create that space for experimentation, whether on the other hand, they also work with champions. And so when you kind of pinpointed some of the challenges there, I was like, "Yep, they sound familiar." And I think that they are sounding very familiar for our listeners, too. So I'd like to go a bit deeper there. And I think maybe the first question, I'm curious to see how, because the people that are being chosen, the people that end up being the champions, they matter because they are the ones that are bringing the work forward. So there's a specific responsibility attached to it. And I know that usually these types of roles are voluntary roles. That means they're being done alongside their day-to-day job. And so they can dedicate only a limited amount of them, etc. So the question is like, "How do we choose them? How do we choose them to try as much as we can to set them and ourselves up for success?" And what I mean by that are mainly two things. Are you looking into a specific profile? First of all, because you mentioned leadership skills, etc. I'm curious if you're looking for specific characteristics in these people. And the second question is, are you for having them be nominated by a teammate or applying or both to have a preference for one or the other? So two questions in one. Who are these people? What's the profile? And then how would we best choose them? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. And I think some of the challenges come around with you mentioned sort of volunteering. Sometimes they're just voluntary. Exactly. They never wanted to be there at all. And if you think about it, if they're meant to be flying the flag for the change back in their business unit, back in their business division or back in their team, and they never even wanted to be there in the first place. It's almost like you're already on the back foot from the very beginning. You're having to try and convince them to want to attend potentially briefing sessions or workshops or like additional early training. And at the same time, they don't even want to be there at all. So you're having to do two stages of getting them involved in the change, actually wanting to be involved in the change, and then actually doing the work to go and cascade that to their teams and be active. So my preference is always, let me talk about what traditionally does happen. So traditionally, you get nominated. And often what I'm looking for and what I'll often sort of, like how I'll spook, how people got chosen is that you're looking for somebody who is open to change, who has jumped on board previous changes early or has been early adopters of something else, sort of early. And you've already seen that behavior come through. It could be people like I mentioned, who maybe have a lot of influence and a lot of sway in a team. They build relationships really well, people trust them, people come to them. And then it could be sometimes it'll be more strategic around people who maybe are like a team leader. So generally, changed champions tend to be sort of more lower level staff, so more junior staff who maybe don't have direct reports. Sometimes, though, they are people who maybe are a team leader who have more of that authority rather than influence over their team. So it really just depends on the change, it depends on the organization, it depends on availability capacity. I would always when I'm sort of looking at trying to pull together a change champion network, I would always try to provide some sort of guide as to how much capacity is going to be required from that person. Because exactly what you mentioned, it is discretionary work. Usually you're not hired into a change champion role, changes are short, like changes linked to projects, usually, which are short, sharp pieces of work that have a defined start and end date. So usually it's not even in anybody's job description that they're going to be a change champion. It'll be like, you know, that you need an advocate change, like very wishy-washy, very vague. But to change champion role in a change is an actual role, like it's a very critical role that does require capacity. So with the discretionary effort, you really want to be upfront and explain how much time capacity that's going to be. If it's a long change, it might be something like two hours a month. If it's a shorter change, where the go-lives, the launch is going to be sooner, you might need to be open and honest about it being like, you know, two hours a week. And then whatever you said as your capacity, know that there's going to be flexing and flowing, like, you know, some weeks, it'll be more some weeks, it might be less, but try and be respectful about that because people have gone into it and leaders have potentially nominated people on the understanding that that's how much capacity it's kind of going to be. So then we get to, so they're the kinds of people that we want. We want people who are open, we want people who are willing to communicate and share things who I've got to bring a sort of certain buzz and excitement. Saying that, it is sometimes strategic and I've definitely had this on projects, usually when they're nominated, when change champions are nominated. It can be strategic to actually bring some naysayers into your change champion network. Because those people could have the influence that you needed, even if they don't have the motivation and excitement yet. And if you are able to get them on board the change, engage them fully, get them seeing and including them in the solution development, so that actually often they have brilliant ideas and a really good example. I was just working on a change recently and there was a senior leader who his team was not specifically affected by this change. He didn't have direct reports that were going to be affected by this change, but he had a lot of opinions and the other leaders who were his peers were not absent, but they just, their direct reports were directly affected, but they were not as involved. Anyway, so we ended up unofficially bringing him in as a change champion and he did a fantastic job. He actually cascaded comms. He took a lot of effort because he raised a lot of points and he had a lot of questions and he flagged a lot of things that maybe there was a typo in an email and things like that. So he, while it kind of created a lot of effort at the same time A, like better to know what that resistance and what those challenges and problems are, so you can actually solve them and deal with them and B, he was really involved and he was really engaged and he did communicate and cascade to his team, like his broader team, which was what we really needed in that particular division. So you don't always want just yes, yes men, yes women in the change champion network. He want to be really strategic and that's why sometimes you might not choose the most positive person, but you might choose the person who maybe has like tenure there and really understands and knows, well you might choose somebody who's new and got fresh eyes, critical eyes of how things are being done currently in the organisation. So then let's get to this question around nominating versus like getting people to apply. So I'm a firm believer that nominating is a problem because you often end up with the usual suspects and these poor people are put on to change after change and they're always the change champion and because they've done it before they'll do it again and they're often the high achievers, they're often the people who are like, you know, carrying a team, they're already usually doing two to three people's jobs and then adding the change work on top like it starts to become a little bit unfair and they can start to become resentful and burn out. So try to share the load around if you are going to nominate, but my preference is always to actually try to get people to have so much desire to want to be a change champion and this really comes down to your marketing and like communication strategy for the change in its very early days. Not when you're ready to sort of communicate about go live, you need to be doing this, you know, when the project's kicking off, you need to be like, and that's one of the things that I do is like creating a really strong change, brand theme, messaging narrative, creating things that are going to really spike people's interest excitement and buzz, creating a role for change champions that makes them so excited that they want to put their hand up to be involved. And some of the ways to do that is to actually give them access to things that other people don't get, to give them capability, exposure, visibility, to maybe senior leaders so that there is a professional development win in there for them. It's not just extra work. Yeah, you mentioned prior to this, the engagement piece and you somehow, I think, already hinted into this, or we bring the champions in and we kill the design or we co-create with them, we just we don't just tell them what I have to do, like we don't just give them a pack and say, okay, off you go. And I wonder if there's a good moment to bring champions in the life cycle of a change management process. So besides this marketing that you were doing, the brand, like starting to talk about the change and designing a appealing role and a set of rewards for the champions, is there any other work that has to be done before we look for champions? Like what's a good moment to bring these people in? Because like, is there any foundational elements prior, like work that has to be done before? Do we wait for the champions and kind of involve them fully? Like where do you see that boundary? Because I also know that as change managers and when an organization, plans a change, there is already a plan. So what is left to the champions to influence steel? So yeah, I guess the question is where in that journey is it most useful to bring these people in and support? Yeah, so I think like if I reflect back on sort of like a global culture change that I worked on, we actually ended up with two different culture networks. So there were called like culture connectors. So you can call your change champions whatever you want if people are like getting fatigued with the idea of change champions. Honestly, just call them change champions nobody cares. What's more important is that you engage them properly, you support them properly, you upskill them properly and you give them the tools and the belief in themselves and like we mentioned sort of some of those rewards like maybe if it's financial, like why not give them a bit of a boost for doing this extra discretionary work? Like why not do that? Whatever you can get approved, right? So you've got these people and we had two sets. So we had like a senior advisory network which was like sort of more 20 people globally at more of a senior level and then we had like 110 change champions that were more junior levels globally. They played different roles but they were actually really involved in the solution design. So the senior group worked with the external consultants in developing more of the strategy. The junior ones we also workshopped with them but they had much more of a role in kind of cascading and we sort of would more present things to them. So instead of being involved in the design from the beginning, we would present things to them for feedback. They had already been designed and developed. But both of those culture networks kicked off at the very beginning and then so that is probably what I would say is the majority of change champion networks. You probably want to kick them off as early as possible. You want to already know what the project is and what it's going to be about so that you can actually create some of that messaging. But like when I go and run like a future state workshop and I'll do vision setting and benefits mapping with like a board or an executive team or a senior leadership team or the project team. So I'll run this workshop and I'll do these two things and then out of that comes the messaging and it's almost like like I talk a little bit about the change being because I'm more of a change advisor as a consultant. The change being decoupled from project delivery and from the project launch. So it's almost like it doesn't matter what's being delivered. What matters is that we get the experience and you can do that work from the very beginning. You can do that work from even I've done it before with the boards before before the project is even kicked off. They know they want to do this project. They've approved the project but the project itself hasn't even started. Project manager is not even in place. You can be running this workshop. So then because you have that kind of clear understanding, clear messaging, you might want to know what's being developed but you know why and you know what experience you want to achieve even if you don't know how you're going to get to that experience. That gives you enough for to be able to market, communicate, make it really enticing for people to want to opt in to be in the change champion network or in the case where you know sometimes it might be that they opt in and there's still a bit of a review and vet process to make sure we've got a good mix with the right people or that there's no gaps in the business not being represented or something. Or even on the nomination side it gives the leaders who have to nominate people from their teams. More of a gauge just to like what exactly do they want to what exactly is the change in who could be the right fit. So I would say you don't even necessarily need to have the solution created or done is probably better if you don't because if you involve change champions really early on you build that trust in the business that their voice is being heard because these are their representatives and their voices being heard and their needs are being considered and delivered based on that. Then you also have them to flush out challenges and issues along the way. Your engagement with them might change so it might be like in the early days it might just be like every month and then there might be a series of workshops which are a bit more intense for a couple of weeks where you're getting more feedback or doing current and future process map being or whatever it is. Then you might have again like a kind of more like a monthly rhythm and then you might be going into okay cool we've designed some of the solution now like first for some of my change champion networks again this one with a client was more based on there was a more senior network and then there was a more junior network. Regardless we actually did the same thing with them. So with the senior network we did a walk through of what the different modules in this it was an enterprise resource platform what the different modules in the enterprise resource platform looked like because people couldn't get their head around it because we kept talking about it but they hadn't seen it then we did the same thing so a week later we'll do a walk through with the junior group and along the way they're building their understanding their like seeing the system in action even if they're not hands on themselves they're at least seeing it they're able to ask questions they're able to validate things they're able to give feedback but best of all they're then able to go back to their teams and tell them hey you know in the team meeting or at the water cooler hey or you know zoom call whatever I saw rare this is like what it's doing they're taking our feedback on board and you're kind of building that trust with this community from the very beginning and so if you can build that like you don't want to waste people's time like I've also had experiences with clients where prior to me starting on the change they had a change champion network they had a monthly meeting and the monthly meeting was just a project update and there was no two-way communication feedback engagement so people felt like they were wasting their time and they were really resentful about it so when I came into that client's project and helped them to reset it I actually had to reinstate those and really shift the energy and get people workshopping and get people involved so that I could show and almost prove to them and rebuild their trust that their inputs were going to be taken seriously and it wasn't just going to be like us talking at them and blasting at them so you really want to think about how are you going to involve people along the way especially if it's a one to three-year transformation it might not be that you always like I would still keep a monthly rhythm at the least but you want to really think about well what can you do with that time to make it really effective and maybe you don't have anything really active that you need them to work on to help support the change or the community maybe there's nothing really for them to communicate back with their people but what you can do instead then is give them some of the other bonuses for being a change champion with some change champion networks I've built capability so I've run very detailed capability sessions that usually I would you know hold for my consulting clients and charge for but because there are change champion network I've gone I'm going to give you this training for free I'm going to deliver this training for you for free to thank you for being a champion to build your leadership skills and your skills you know as an influential professional and give you some more tools for your toolkit but also the KB1 I think for people that are listening and honestly for myself that I'm curious if you could give a few examples of maybe with different projects what are the champions actually doing like some of their tasks or their role I took notes of this almost like information cascading updates but not only the information that's being cascading the excitement the why the reasoning etc. help us understand in through a few examples how does this actually look like like what are the champions expected to do asked to do and granted I imagine that it looks very different from project to project and that's why you kind of define the role based on the vision setting and the benefits mapping and all of that the why behind help us visualize it with a few examples so with one project that I worked on or first of all let me preface it by saying it might change what their expectations are of the role and what tasks they might help and do it might change depending on where you're at in the project so for example with one project one of the bonuses so we'll bring in office 365 into an organization and with that project one of the bonuses that the change champions got was that we actually took them out to the Microsoft offices and gave them an immersive day to get hands on with the new office 365 tools before anybody else in the organization got them so they got this day out you know leaving site which for that organization was you know pretty cool like not not so often that they get to sort of do that but then they also got early access to the system as early as possible sometimes you will and that was more of an exposure thing but then because they've got that early access again they can then advocate and spruke and promote the change for you the systems for you but then when it comes to like go live if you've given your change champions early access then you can also utilize them as support business support at go live so they might be the first line of support if people can't find the answer in training materials or on the share point or in the system but then they might be the first point of support like buddy to help people you might also have them do your testing so your user acceptance testing for you with an office refurbishment that I was running recently I had them come and they got to see some of the things ahead of time before other people got access to you know new meeting room and things like that they could come and see. And I also used some of them in, I was doing a comms campaign and I was doing different videos. So I put on their acting abilities, dragged a few of them in to be like the cast of these different videos. And even the culture change that I worked on as well, like we had different culture change champions who were included in the like, communication videos and communications campaign. In other cases, we might use them to provide testimonials and feedback again. That's one of the great things about giving them early access to the system, even if it's a sandbox or if it's user acceptance testing, you can then potentially film or get written or video testimonials from them about using the system or case studies. And then, and sometimes like in some cases, I'll have pulled that quote and put it into like a monthly newsletter or weekly newsletter or something like that. Then you can run workshops with them. So in some cases, like one of the changes that I worked on was enterprise resource platform. And the more senior group actually got access to the system before the junior group, like the junior group didn't get access until they needed to do testing. But the senior group got access, but then also we were able to then do better process mapping. So you can then potentially run workshops with them around process mapping and I'll even run vision setting workshops with some of my changed champions. So where I'll be like, great, like this is what the leaders think, the vision for the change is, what is it for you guys? Like what is at your level? What do you think your teams are going to get out of this change and the benefits that they're going to get and the transformation in the experience that they'll have from this solution, whatever it is, whether it's a new office, a new system, a new operating model, a new way of working, a new culture. So there are a few different things. In some cases, I've gotten, I've asked some change champions, not all of them. Like sometimes I'll sort of, if it's something cool that maybe you don't usually get exposure to, I'll kind of put a call out into the change champion network and say, hey, is anybody interested in this? So for one of them, I was drafting the video scripts for some videos and these videos were more based around capability for this project. So I put the call out to the change champion network and I was like, hey, does anybody want to review the scripts for me? I'm not going to speak to your people at your level. I think they're great, but I want to actually have your eyes on this and they added some really great builds in for me. In other cases, I've sometimes used them to do the voiceover for the video. I usually do the voiceovers for video. People seem to love my voice anyway. But sometimes you just want a little bit of diversity in the communications and in the videos and things like that. So sometimes I use them as the voiceover and I'll, again, I'll teach them how to do voiceovers. And for some people who don't have a meeting communications and marketing advertising background like me, maybe they've never been exposed to a video script. Maybe they've never been exposed to a microphone in order to sit and do like recorder voiceover. So there's some of the, like, kind of more practical tasks. But I think where change champions really come into their own is in the solution design and development. So if you can get them involved in workshops, where they're either helping with current process mapping, future process mapping, I think some of the best change champion communities have been the ones who have actively done that from end to end for current process and future process maps. 'Cause it gives them the understanding and they get to bring in all of the additional nuances and perspectives from their specific team. Because you might have a sales team who's talking on behalf of a marketing team, they do really different roles. They have really different perspectives. They have really different goals and objectives and really different challenges. So you wanna have the perspective of both one person from the sales team and one person from the marketing team. Instead of having people talk on behalf of other people and you do sometimes see that where they are gaps in the business where there is no change champion and their voice doesn't get heard until it's too late after go live and like their needs have been completely missed from the solution. So I would say solution design, giving feedback, walking through the system, sometimes I've even had them do training early and actually help develop the training. You can use change champions to actually start pulling together some of the training videos and why not? Because that's gonna be peer to peer. That's gonna have so much more trust and resonance with the end users in the organization. If they know that their peer is doing the training video and again, it's a skill set that you can coach and train them on that they then get to take into the future if they wanted to change careers, change roles, maybe even change companies, change industries. Then the last area where I've often used change champions is at go live. So when the project is launching, often you have a lot to communicate around readiness. So what are the things that each team or person needs to do by what dates or maybe sometimes it's information that needs to come back to the project or preferences, confirmations. So like one change we were looking at, does anybody have special needs that we need to be aware of in the project? And so the change champions with a one who would go out scope, does anybody have special needs, bring that back in. And then be that kind of on the ground support at launch for their teams. But also any other teams that maybe missing a change champion like sort of an all round general. So you might give them additional frequently asked questions. You might have given them extra training on the solution, on the system, whatever it is, in order for them to be able to really actively answer questions and feel really knowledgeable. And beyond the change, what you can do with change champion networks is actually you can keep them going for continuous improvement and you can create rhythms for them for an ongoing basis to support continuous improvement, which should always be done. But you can also use them ongoing as well to potentially create that new community to like in some cases, this got to sound really crazy. But there have been changes that I've worked on where people have never met each other. They work in the same business. They might even be at the same level within the business. They've truly never even met each other before. And I've had to play the role of matchmaker. So a lot of these change champions get a real, there's a real value in them in connecting and building their network across the organization, not just from a professional perspective, but also from a personal perspective. So to be able to keep those rhythms going after go live for continuous improvement for that community building aspect. But then also to be able to sometimes, maybe utilize them, that might even open up new roles for them, which could be great. We're going to create this brand new position because it's such a valuable work that you've been doing helping the project. We're going to create this new position where you're going to be a training and culture. Advisor or something like that for this team. So it can really be a great professional pathway for change champions. But what I'd say is it doesn't all just end at go live or launch. You can absolutely get so much value from that network if you keep it going in the future, but you have to hand the reins over to somebody because the project manager, the change manager, they're going to go start working on another change or leave the organization to work on another project. Like you, like there has to be, like as part of the change you have to hand it over if you do want to keep it going, you have to actually hand it over and have somebody laid that community moving forward. This was gold. I take so many notes. Lata, I can definitely see how everything you've said and all of their big and small contributions and initiatives are adding to the change process. Now, I think I'm curious to know if there's, if is there such a thing as too much community in project management? Is there any scenario situation where working with champions can fragment or slow the change down? Do you think there's any risks there? I think one of the biggest risks is when you are engaging champions and you don't actually do two-way engagement with them, I think it can break a lot of trust. Change champions can get very resentful. The business then loses trust in the project team. So if it's all just lip service, just don't do it. It's better to not have champions at all if you're not going to actually utilize them to help provide feedback input. Like either of the new exchange champions to provide feedback and input on the training that we're developing. If you're not going to use them, then don't have them at all. Just don't bother. But when you do use them, you end up with more effective communications and training and support at GoLive. So it might take that a little bit of extra time. You might have to go that little bit slower. You might get some feedback that maybe kind of, you know, Erx, you or Rubs you the wrong way. Like they might turn around and go, "This solution that you've got isn't for purpose, but isn't it better to find that out before you put all of your time energy and money into developing it and launching it?" Like isn't that better? You would rather actually find that stuff out upfront. And again, if you've got change champions who are not convinced about the change, it's great because it means that there's going to be end users stakeholders, business teams that are the same. So you're using your change champions as a microcosm of the wider organization. So it might so you down a little bit. But in the long run, it prevents you having to do the change again, which happens a lot. Like there are projects that I've worked on where they've literally two years after they'd brought in a new solution, they're having to start that project from scratch again because it was not fit for purpose. The technology was not good. and. nobody liked used or wanted to use it. So in this particular case, it was a mobile application workflow processes. And it was on tablets. And within two years out of a hundred tablets, so I hadn't worked on the initial change, but I was working on the next, like, then redoing it. Within two years out of a hundred tablets, only ten of them were still working, so 90 of them were not working anymore. And out of those ten, a few of those were actually in for repair. So the trust for that team was just completely lost. People did not even, like, knowing that they had to do that project again, they had to source brand new hardware, brand new software, develop it all from scratch. Trying to go and relaunch that, it's like the very first step I had to do was rebuild trust. And part of rebuilding trust was going, we're going to get your involvement this time. We're actually going to get you to provide feedback in input. We're not going to go do this in an ivory tower off in a silo. And I think a lot of project teams, like they, they want to hand over a shiny object. They don't want people to see, you know, all of the work that went into creating it on all the cracks that might be under the surface and everything like that. But the problem with when you do that is that if it's not right, which often it isn't, often that's missing so much stuff. You hand over something to people who, and they can't use it, and it falls apart. And that's where a lot of the return on investment, like I talked about, we don't just do change, we don't just engage people for the fun of it. We want to get the return on investment. We want to get the business benefits. Why do we even want to do this change? You know, will we try to grow sales, save money? It reduced risk, improved customer experience. Do you know what I mean? Like, well, like, what is it that we're trying to do? What are we trying to achieve? And then from an experience perspective, what are we trying to achieve? When you involve people along the way and along the journey, you're more likely to actually create a more robust, more successful, more fit for purpose solution. And people are more interested and more engaged along the way on it. So it launches is more successful at launch, more successful implementation. And the risk, which happens a lot like you think it doesn't happen, it happens so frequently. And whenever I'm talking with my students, they're always like, yep, lean there, where you're having to redo the change within a few months or within a year or two, which just you'll be invested too much money, time, effort and energy to have to redo a change so soon. Yes, maybe three years, the technology moves on, five years, maybe the technology moves on or the change moves on or whatever, that you shouldn't be having to redo a change so quickly. So you've got a way out, like, is it better to maybe have the consequences of slowing down through properly engaging in the development versus potentially having to redo the whole thing from scratch post implementation because it wouldn't fit for purpose. And then the last thing I would really say on this question is, um, make sure that if you're using change champions that you've got something that you want to use them for. So like, don't just meet up with them and waste their time. If you don't have anything to communicate with them one month, cancel it for the month. They will love you for it. So, Latta, I guess I'm left with this question off. Um, the risk is very real. So you said it yourself, like, there are so too many projects that end up in kind of like a revamp, needing a relaunch after, after a while. What would you say is a mindset shift that you wish more leaders would have, would go through when it comes to change management to, to avoid that as much as possible, grand, that knowing that it cannot always run smoothly and perfectly. What would you say? What would you put on that list? I would say that feed like in, so I'm trained in neuro linguistic programming and coaching. So I'm neuro linguistic programming. NLP for sure, it's much easier to say. And it's the study of excellence in behavior, communications and psychology and your emotions. And then I bring a lot of these NLP tools, coaching tools into my change leadership work and into the way that I lead and deliver change, which is why it's so effective and so, so successful and I build relationships so well and create such compelling, engaging change. And one of the sort of like principles in NLP is there is no failure only feedback. There is no failure only feedback. And I think one of the things that happens with leaders and projects is that they are so scared of getting negative feedback about a project about a change that they don't want to share it with anybody until it's finished essentially. And if you're so scared of feedback and of what people are going to say, it's actually preventing you often from making good decisions, from getting that feedback that input, from being able to actually adjust and adapt before you go live. Just because somebody gives you feedback, it's not a personal attack on you, but also it's doesn't mean you have to actually do the feedback and doesn't mean you have to action what they ask. People can ask for the moon and back and I actually think that in organizations, a lot of people feel very entitled to something that is actually not their business. They don't own the business, they don't share orders in our business. It's not their business, but they feel very entitled to have an opinion. And that's just the nature of how work has changed, right? The engagement in workplaces and how work has changed. People almost take on too much responsibility, I think at work, and they feel like they have more of a say than they really actually do. It's not their business. They are an employee, they are an individual who's been engaged on a contractual basis to provide services and skills in line of the greater good of that organization's goals. So whatever the organization needs to do to stay profitable or successful if it's a community-based organization, profitable or successful for their customers, clients, community to say safe and to do things according to the law and to be able to continue that organization in the future. So to be sustainable, not from like a environmental sustainability or that might be part of it, but to be a sustainable business in the future that continues for years to come. Whatever an organization needs to do, link, they need to do it. People often have their own opinions and they're sharing those opinions at the point of change because suddenly it's hitting them in the face. Just because they have an opinion doesn't mean you actually need to complete on agree to or action their feedback. But the sheer process of gathering the feedback, then making sure that it is noted, documented, and then making sure this is so important, closing the circle, so closing the feedback loop, communicating back to people, we're doing XYZ, we're not doing ABC and here's the reasons why. People sometimes just want to their voice heard. They don't actually, they're not super-wetted to what the outcome is. It was just a bit of a power player, a power push, and a bit of a ego boost that they wanted their voice heard. And like one change that I worked on specifically, I was actually briefing the project team ahead of go live. And it was, you know, to a group of people and they were people who were more junior, very junior, lower level in the organization. They were told, these people would be told where they had to be on a certain day, what time they had to be there, what materials they could use, what they needed to do and in what time frame they had to do it. In their day to day job, they had very little autonomy, very little power, very little flexibility, very little scope. If they then also live in a household where maybe they're told constantly by their partner or their parents or their family or whatever what to do or by their community, maybe what to do, like we're in their life at any point do they ever get power and autonomy. So when your change comes knocking, which inevitably will change will always come knocking, they sort of almost see that as an opportunity. And so sometimes just by understanding sometimes people aren't resisting, they're not providing negative feedback or resisting because it's life or death for them, but because it's an opportunity for them to have that little bit of power or that little bit of autonomy. And in other cases, their feedback might be perfectly valid and you would actually do super well to listen to it, implement it and thank them for that. The important thing is to gather it, document it and have that feedback loop and be able to explain why you're not going to do it. And in some cases it might be we're not going to do it now, but we're going to put it in the pipeline for continuous improvement or for phase two. Or that was a great idea. We're not in a position at this stage to be able to do it. People just want to be heard. Love it. Lata, when change comes knocking, where can listeners connect with you to learn more about your work and potentially collaborate with you? Do you come knocking on my LinkedIn? So I'm very active on LinkedIn. I'm always sharing stuff about James. I'm just there at Lata Hamilton on LinkedIn. And then if you are interested in learning more about change management, about maybe bringing it into your leadership or even potentially making the career change to change management, such an amazing, highly paid, female dominated profession, which there's not many professions out there like that. Definitely come check out my leading successful change program. But if you just kind of want more, like I talked a lot about sort of the creativity and the ideas and things like that, I would definitely recommend that you grab my creative Moanshideers guide. It's got 53 ways to bring your change and transformation to life and different ideas to engage people. And you can get that at latahammleton.com/launch. Perfect. We're going to make sure to link everything in the show notes. Lata, I appreciate so much your time. Thank you for your insights and the great ideas and tips you shared with us today. And I will see you all next time. Take care. Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much for having me.