When change happens, your role is to communicate vision, mission, and strategy throughout your organization. But you want employees to embrace the change, not simply submit to it, and successful implementation will depend on people throughout your organization.

To that end, there are ways to help your employees get invested in change:

• Harness your own organizational horsepower. Seek out informal leaders whose insights may play a role in refining that strategy and whose support may be invaluable in securing the participation of team members who resist the change. Work to create a culture where the majority of people are your change leaders.
• Be a good coach. To optimize organization-wide support, make sure that your change messages include information about what you expect of individuals and how they can expect the change to affect them.
• Create a structure for “shared change.” Cross-functional teams and task forces that are representative of the entire organization and can offer you the full spectrum of points of view that you need. They can help with strategic shifts so that you have a mechanism to engage the organization when you need to.

By putting those pieces in place, your organization is always ready for change—it’s never standing still when change occurs.

Read the second in our series of Connections to Growth Leadership guides, Harnessing—and Leveraging—the Power of Change, to learn how you can prepare your team for change, whenever it happens.