When travelling in convoy, the basic rule is to move at the pace of the slowest vehicle. In change management, the change leader needs to turn this strategy on its head. Instead of basing the change process on the slowest and probably most resistant people in your organisation, let it benefit from your best people.

Get these people on board and they will become the heroes of your organisational change initiative.

Why so many change leaders fail with change management

While the failure to get the buy-in of an organisation's employees and evolve organisational culture is the number one reason for change failure, high up on the list is the failure of a change leader to lead the change initiative. Instead of focussing on the most important aspects of organisational change, the ill prepared change leader finds all their time is spent on micro managing. Too much time is spent in the wrong place, with the resulting lack of focus on project success.

By identifying and coaching your best people, you'll encourage them to become the champions of change that change management needs to be effective.

Spend time with your best performers to promote organisational change

Senior management often expects a change initiative to improve the worst performers. Potential outcomes are based upon a quantified improvement among these worst performers. For example, imagine how your sales figures would look if your worst performers experienced the outcomes of your best performers. However, this may be the hardest way of instigating change. It takes more effort on the part of the change leader and the people involved in change to achieve such outcomes.

Consider a sales office in which the best salesperson is producing revenue of $500,000 and the worst $150,000. A measured 10% improvement in productivity would lead to a revenue increase of $50,000 and $15,000 respectively. Where do you want to put your effort?

Listen to your top performers. Ask them for their views on the proposed change, and take notice of what they say. Get these people on board and the results of organisational change will flow through faster. It will then be easier to demonstrate the benefits to individuals and teams, and your best performers can be coached to manage change while you lead change.

Ask your top performers to challenge themselves

Change leaders can be tempted to allow their best performers to stick with what they know while they concentrate on pushing change to others. This approach achieves the biggest level of resistance. While the change leader can reasonably point to the attention spent with the lowest achievers, there will be questions asked by these as to 'the experiment' they are being used for.

Instead challenge the best performers to challenge themselves, taking on the change initiative head on and helping to shape it for success. When IBM pushed Rod Adkins, one of its biggest producers – responsible for 35,000 employees and $4 billion of sales – and asked him to head a new start-up, it risked alienating him and destroying the profits of an existing business. Within five years, however, Adkins new 'baby' was producing more than $15 billion in revenue.

Challenge your best people, let them own organisational change, and results will flow.

Coach the best to coach everyone

Having identified your best people and got their buy-in on the change initiative, don't be afraid to use them to their best advantage. As a change leader, you should consider coaching these best people to coach down the line. Their peers will listen to them: after all, successful people must be doing something right and if they are embracing change then change must be good.

Give your best people the responsibility they deserve, and allow them to be the champions of change that will drive change at the coal face.

In summary

When changing an organisation, the change leader should use all the tools at their disposal. The most powerful of these, and yet often most overlooked, is the star people that already exist in the organisation. Bringing these people on board quickly, gaining their trust, and taking notice of their feedback on the change initiative will put fuel into the gas tanks of organisational change. They will become peer group persuaders, and can be coached to manage change at the micro, coal face level.

Partner the change management team with your star players, and you'll find organisational change is accelerated toward its anticipated goals.