Respected front-line informal leaders who resist a change are promoted or moved into real new roles, and the colleagues who took their cue from them lose their reason to hold out.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Four months after a snack-food plant in Ohio switched to new scheduling software, the second shift still ran on paper boards, and the plant manager knew why: a line lead with twenty-two years in, the person operators asked about everything, had told a shift meeting the system would not survive the holiday rush. The regional operations team had an open training coordinator role covering three plants, which needed exactly the credibility he had. In August the plant manager recommended him for it, with a raise and a company truck, and told him plainly that the second shift would move to the software either way. He took the job. Before he left, the plant manager asked him to list the software's real weaknesses, and two of them were fixed by October. The paper boards were gone the same month.
Why it works
Removing the hero makes going along easier for everyone else: an operator who adopts the change no longer faces the disapproval of the person whose opinion counted. Resistance looks worse without its anchor, since its strength came from that person's endorsement. Holding out becomes costlier, because each remaining resister is now individually visible with no respected figure to point to. It works only if leadership has found the real informal leader, if the move reads as routine progression, and if the new role is far enough away to cut the daily influence.
The thinking behind it
Mark Granovetter Granovetter's Threshold Models of Collective Behavior (1978) holds that each person joins a collective action once enough others have, so outcomes depend on the spread of thresholds and on who goes first. The local hero sets the threshold for colleagues: while that person objects, holding out feels safe. A move changes who goes first, and adoption can cascade among people who were waiting for permission.
Solomon E. Asch In Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments (1951), Asch found that when one other person in the group gave the correct answer, conformity to a wrong majority fell sharply, and it rose again when that partner switched sides. The informal leader is that partner for the doubters on the floor, so their departure changes what everyone else is willing to say.
When it fits
Stalled change is the setting: one respected person on the floor doubts it, a genuine role exists that suits their standing and skills, and you have the authority or the sponsor to fill it. It works only if you have identified the real informal leader, and checked with more than one source.
How to use it well
Find the right person first: ask who people go to with questions, and check with more than one source.
- Take their objections seriously before anything else. Some will be right, and fixing them costs little.
- Match them to a real role, a step up, where their credibility is an asset.
- Tell them what happens to the change after they leave.
- Thank them publicly, and accurately, for what they built.
Move the change forward soon after, while the team is still adjusting, and explain the move to the team in terms of the new role's work.
What it costs and where it backfires
Getting the wrong person leaves the real cue-setter in place and tells everyone leadership is hunting heroes. A move the team reads as exile turns the person into a martyr and revives the resistance. You may also lose someone whose doubts were useful. A real job is what keeps it clean. Inventing a role to get the person out of the building, or lying about why the move is happening now, turns it into deception.
When it is used on you
Compare the decision rights of any attractive role offered far away in the middle of a contested change with the standing you hold now. If the standing is worth more, decline or negotiate a role closer to the work, and tell colleagues your view of the change before you go.