Executives and senior leaders: importance and role

The importance of executives and senior leaders in times of change

Executives and senior leaders provide the authority and credibility needed for a change to be successful. Whether the change involves new processes, new systems, new job roles or new organization structures - or all of the above - senior leaders must be present to demonstrate their own and the organization's commitment to the change.

Four benchmarking findings, including the first glimpse at findings from the 2009 study, illustrate the importance of senior leaders:

• When asked to identity the top contributor to success of their change, participants in the 2009 benchmarking study identified active and visible executive sponsorship as number one on the list, by a four-to-one margin. Sponsorship was at the top of the list in all six of Prosci's benchmarking studies: 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009. While much has changed in the field of change management over the last decade, the importance of sponsorship has remained constant.

• When asked to identify the biggest obstacle to success, participants in the 2009 benchmarking study identified ineffective change sponsorship from senior leaders as their primary obstacle. Sponsors were inactive or invisible, not at the right level, not aligning other leaders around the change and wavering in their support. Ineffective sponsorship resulted in more resistance and slower progress for the effort.

• Participants who were able to start change management at the initiation of the project were asked to identify what enabled this preferred approach. The factor that was most cited as responsible for ensuring change management started at the onset of the project: senior leadership involvement. Senior leaders with knowledge and experience in leading change insisted on change management inclusion from the start of the project.

• Employees have preferred senders of messages about change. There are two people in the organization employees want to hear from about the change: the person they report to (this will be addressed in the next tutorial) and a leader at the top.

So, not only are senior leaders important at the macro-level, they play a key role in supporting the application of change management and in communicating directly to employees about why a change is needed.

The role of the sponsor

In the 2005 and 2007 benchmarking studies, participants outlined a consistent set of roles that needed to be filled by senior leaders and executives in times of change. The three roles identified in these studies were:

1. Participate actively and visibly throughout the project - The role of active and visible participation for the primary sponsor was cited more frequently than any other sponsor activity. Study participants identified a list of activities that constituted active and visible sponsorship from allocating the necessary funding to attending project review meetings. The other important word in this role is "throughout" - sponsors cannot disappear once they've attended the kick-off meeting for a project. Their sustained presence is necessary to build and maintain momentum for a change.

2. Build a coalition of sponsorship and manage resistance - Participants stated the need for the primary sponsor to take a lead role in building and maintaining a healthy coalition in support of the change. The sponsor must mobilize other key business leaders and stakeholders so they can take the change back to their part of the organization. The coalition is especially important for changes that stretch across multiple parts of the organization.

3. Communicate directly with employees - As noted above, employees want to hear about why a change is important from someone at the top - either at the very top of the organization or at the top of their department or division (i.e. someone from the sponsor coalition). Senior leaders are looked to for messages about why the change is being made and the risks or costs if no change is made.

While these three roles are critical to the success of any change effort, the reality is that not all executives and senior leaders are fulfilling these roles effectively. Figure 1 below shows the percentage of participants that stated their sponsors were either "extremely ineffective" or "ineffective" for the three roles outlined above. Of the 575 participants in the 2009 study, over one-fifth were struggling with sponsors in all of the roles. The role that sponsors were the worst at was communicating directly with employees. Many do not know that this is expected of them and do not make the time to build a compelling case to their employees for why the change is happening.

Figure 1 - Sponsor role fulfillment benchmarking findings

Attitude toward sponsorship

For the first time, participants in the 2009 study were asked to characterize their sponsors at the beginning of the project. The data shows that most senior leaders were easy to engage in the role of sponsor. Over one-third were proactive and enthusiastic about sponsoring change and nearly 40% were ready to do what was asked. Only one-quarter of participants indicated some hesitation, resistance or indifference from their sponsor.

Figure 2 - Executives' and senior leaders' attitude toward their role

Understanding of role

While participants said their executives and senior leaders were generally willing to be sponsors of change, many did not know what that actually meant. Figure 3 shows the results from participants rating how well their sponsors understood their role and responsibilities. Over 50% of participants reported that their sponsors did not have an adequate understanding of the role of a sponsor.

Figure 3 - Level of understanding of what it means to sponsor a change

So, while senior leaders were willing to be sponsors, they did not have a necessary understanding of what was really expected of them. This is where the role of "enabler" comes in for change management specialists. The change management team or resource must provide the guidance and specific action steps required of sponsors. Executives and senior leaders need direction and focus, and the change management specialist can enable them to be successful sponsors of change.

Coming next: a look at the role of managers and supervisors