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When in any project, making sure that change management occurs with the proper focus on strategy, effective communications, and facilitation of behavioral change, is possibly the most critical task outside of creating a good governance process.  Great behavioral change is best facilitated with a carefully selected group of change agents that are artfully instructed in their roles and activities.

Change agents are leaders who cut across the organization and its business units without regard to the traditional hierarchy.  Often these men and women are freed from day to day tasks in order to focus solely on leading and driving change.  Directly or indirectly, they implement new processes, train employees on new procedures, and act as role models to demonstrate new and better ways to work.  ((Philippe Arrata, Arnaud Despierre, and Gautam Kumra, November 2007.  “Building an effective change agent team.” McKinsey Quarterly))

It is less critical that change agents are formal leaders in the organization.  Really they need to be the informal leaders that people respect in the organization.  In other words, the people who others will listen to and follow.  They also need to be among the most talented in your organization, able to multi-task, communicate, lead, and understand the business environment.  Unfortunately, these people are often the busiest in your organization.

Potential change agents need to understand the explicit benefits and career opportunities that will happen to them as a result of joining the change effort.  The best employees often hesitate to take an assignment that may last only 18 months – which is usually the minimum amount of time required for a transformation – fearing that it will damage their careers in the long run.  ((Ibid))

In fact, the opposite is often true.  Change agents often broaden career opportunities due to the broader exposure to a larger population, a strategic view and experience into a major project, and increased formal and informal leadership training.  Recruiting and selecting change agents is not always the easiest job because of just that – it’s a real job full of hard work.  Making sure there is a communicated benefit and career path is good, but keeping the promise and following through is more important.  This is not the only time you’ll need change agents.

This is just a tidbit of change management.  Unfortunately, change management is on oft overlooked process.  When it is not, communications and training are usually the first things people think about.  Change agents are usually last on the list for a workstream that is last on the list.  This is an area that needs some focus for you to increase the odds of success.