Before a major change, a leader assembles a small group with enough position, expertise, credibility, and leadership to drive it, so the change does not rest on one sponsor.
An example
Six months into the job, the chief executive of an auto parts supplier had concluded that three of its nine plants had to become one, and that if the plan looked like hers alone it would stall in the plants the way two earlier plans had. Before announcing anything, she assembled seven people: the chief financial officer, the head of the largest plant, the chief engineer whose tooling judgment everyone deferred to, the vice president of sales who held the customer relationships, the head of labor relations, whom the union trusted, and two plant managers in their forties widely expected to run the company someday. They met every other week for three months, rewrote the sequencing twice, and changed which plant would absorb the other two. When the plan went to the board, it came from all seven, and each took a piece of the rollout. Two of the plant moves finished within a year.
Why it works
Backing from people the organization already trusts on different grounds (rank, technical judgment, customer knowledge, a name for fairness) makes the change look better and easier to accept. Each can answer a different kind of doubt. The group also makes the change easier to carry out, since its members control many of the resources and channels the rollout needs and keep it moving if the original sponsor is distracted or leaves. Members need real standing and a real say, and the group has to stay small enough to work.
The thinking behind it
John P. Kotter Leading Change (1996) sets out an eight-stage process for major change; its second stage is creating a guiding coalition with enough position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership that those left out cannot easily block progress. The book presents this as a practitioner model drawn from Kotter's experience with change efforts. It explains why the members are chosen for different kinds of standing: each closes off a different route by which the change could be blocked.
When it fits
Major changes that cut across functions and outlast a single budget cycle are where it pays: restructurings, mergers, new operating models. It takes the standing to invite senior people and the willingness to share the design with them. For small or fast decisions it is less useful, since assembling the group costs more than it returns.
How to use it well
Choose for coverage. Ask what kinds of standing the change needs (formal position, expertise, credibility with the front line, proven leadership), and find people who hold each, including some who are skeptical but open.
- Invite them individually and explain why each one is there.
- Give the group real work: diagnosis, design choices, sequencing. A group asked only to endorse will behave like one.
- Meet often enough to build trust, and settle disagreements inside the group before the plan goes out.
- Divide the rollout among the members so each carries a visible part.
Keep it small. Much past the size of a leadership team, it turns into a committee.
What it costs and where it backfires
You share control, and the plan that emerges will be a negotiated one, slower to produce and perhaps less pure than your own. Members with their own agendas can pull the change toward them, and leaving out someone with real standing can create a rival camp. The group also becomes a target: if it looks like an inner circle with privileged access, people outside it may resent it. What keeps it above board is an open group doing real work on a change everyone knows is coming.
When it is used on you
Facing a coalition formed around a change you doubt, look at who is in it, who is not, and what each member brings. If your concerns are ones a member could carry, take them to that person. If no one in the group speaks for your part of the business, ask openly for a seat or a hearing before the plan is final.