The champion network: the most underrated mechanism in change management

A communication plan reaches everyone once. A champion reaches their team every day. The difference shows up in the third week after go-live, when the nicely designed email has been forgotten and someone needs an answer right now.

Who to choose

The classic mistake is picking the most enthusiastic person, or worse, whoever had availability. My criterion is different: the person people already go to when they have a question today, before any project exists.

That informal role already exists in every team. Finding who holds it is more efficient than creating it from scratch. It is usually not the manager, and often not the most senior person.

It is also worth including a sceptic. A champion group made only of optimists gives me no information: they will say everything is fine until the day it is not.

The agreement

A champion is not a messenger. If the role is only to forward announcements, the person loses the credibility that made them useful in the first place. What I agree is explicit:

• They get the information before the rest of the team, so they are not caught off guard in front of people who trust them.
• They can disagree with me privately, and I take it seriously.
• They are not responsible for convincing anyone. They are responsible for translating and for telling me what they are hearing.

What to give them

Far fewer slides and far more answers. Three things work in practice: a short piece explaining the "why" of the change in operations language, a FAQ with the hard questions genuinely answered, and a direct channel to me with a fast response.

A FAQ that dodges the hard question destroys the network. If the honest answer is "that decision has not been made yet", that is what has to be written.

The rhythm

Short and frequent beats long and rare. Thirty minutes a week during the critical phase, with a simple agenda: what are you hearing, what is stuck, what do I need to resolve by next week.

That third question is what sustains the network. If what they bring never turns into action, they stop bringing it, and then I lose the only reliable sensor I have.

What this gave me in practice

On the TMS project, the champion network was what carried first-level support through the switch. More than a hundred impacted carriers and around seventy people directly involved do not hold together with a single central help channel. If every question had to escalate to the project team, the queue would have blocked the operation on day one.

The mistake I have made

Building the network too late. A champion recruited two weeks before go-live is an audience, not a network. It has to start alongside the impact assessment, while their opinion can still change something in the design.