Roles and Responsibilities of Change Players

“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” Mary Bryant

According to Firth [2:159], people may be required to play different roles during a change effort. He identifies three main dimensions of “influence” as well as distinct roles in driving organisational change:

In terms of the leadership dimension, the change agent needs to translate opportunities or threats arising in the external environment into a business case for change and the work of the leader is to: [2:163]

• Own and maintain the vision
• Take ownership of the change benefits and ultimate responsibility for achieving them
• Influence the organisation as a whole to become aligned with the vision
• Keep his/her pulse on the vitality of the change project and give whatever treatment is necessary
• Communicate information verbally and electronically
• Communicate meaning in his/her actions
• Nurture relationships
• Resolve conflict where it is damaging
• Create conflict where there is complacency
• Sell ownership and accountability
• Promote self-responsibility
• Agree on a project scope, objectives and success criteria with the change team
• Free up funding, resources and staff
• Review and approve progress and any deviations from the plan.

The change team should ideally be a group of people who share enough political power to make things happen and enough credibility in the organisation to gain acceptance and approval for the change.

The change team should support the change leadership and its work is to: [2:165]

• Make sure it has the right amount and mix of members
• Learn how to be a team (what is its purpose and objectives/how will it behave)
• Understand the need for change, as passed on from the leadership
• Help share the vision and adapt its messages so that it can be communicated to all audiences in the company using a variety of channels
• Shake up the status quo
• Identify exactly what the change is, who it targets and how it can be leveraged
• Design the new work processes and culture
• Align strategic and operational concerns
• Derive specific goals from the vision and oversee their achievement
• Lead or champion change leadership courses
• Organise change communication
• Diagnose and solve problems and inhibitors to change as they arise
• Maintain relentless momentum, learning and freshness
• Encourage all managers or team leaders to propagate these objectives and behaviours
• Be a source of mentorship and coaching.

The employee dimension in driving organisational change refers to those individuals who cannot be described as either a leader or a change team member, but who will still be responsible for making the change effort work. Employees need to own three main objectives concerning change: [2:169]

• To develop their capacity for change – the intellectual strength, emotional openness and attitudinal resilience to accept what is happening.
• to be involved in the change program – to listen, to attend, to be open.
• To participate – to offer information and ideas, to join together with others to solve problems as they arise, to challenge the status quo, to offer feedback on how the change is working at all levels of the organisation, in other words – to own the change.