Influence Analysis
About the Influence Analysis
Identifying stakeholders who will help promote and positively influence change within an organisation is extremely important. The Influence Analysis is designed to identify key people and resources to help evolve and transform change over time. Key to its success is to seek out problems that can undermine the Change Initiative as early as possible, so not to hinder any further progress. This can be completed during the high-level analysis, the change impact assessment or during the detailed stakeholder analysis.
Why you need to complete an Influence Analysis
The role of influencers during a Change Initiative cannot be understated. Their contribution to organisational change is significant as they can help shape the conversation and reaction when launching the initiative. Influencers are the key to mobilising real change, especially when they have prominent roles in the business. They may also be employees with the trust and confidence of their peers, which no amount of leadership can capture.
Influencers are essential to the business as they can spread the message among the workforce and win the trust of the most sceptical employees, making the Change Manager's job much more manageable. Their influence is significantly greater than the decision-makers since their peers selected them as the most influential and trusted employees. They are a change agent. They just need to be empowered by management.
It is critical to build the time and effort into the plan to analyse the company network to find the Influencers.
Prerequisites
- The Change Team is ready to help complete the analysis.
- Complete a pre-review of the resource. In larger organisations, you may have access to resource skills and competency assessment systems. However, for a smaller business, you will need manual processes to identify those key people early on.
- The high-level scope of change, objectives and benefits.
- Plan a workshop to brainstorm the impacts with key stakeholders and the Change Team.
Steps to complete an Influence Analysis
- Create a list of key employee influencers who can be used to accelerate organisational change management and encourage better employee alignment.
- Brainstorm for hidden influencers expected to react positively to change. For example, the Project Team are influencers who will support and promote the change around them.
- Plot the influencers on the Influencer Analysis chart to identify the extent of influence and engagement
- Select the influencer.
Example Influencer Analysis
Next steps
- Plan to engage and empower influencers
- Monitor the influencer involvement in building on the engagement.
Please note: Each division in an organisation has its part in a Change Initiative. All roles have parts in varying capacities. The influence map highlights the various groups and resources in their place of influence. Customers and suppliers typically do not act as influencers except for significant organisation alignments/rebranding Change Initiatives, so they do not require as much involvement.
Download the Influencer Commitment Analysis Document Template
