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Change Agents Playbook | Page 37 Step 6: Appoint a champion Once you have sign-off from the executive team, it's time to hand off the day-to-day execution to a change champion. This person will lead the implementation of the growth engine, report to you on the progress, and act as your second in command. This is a pivotal role; the change champion is the one who will take up the challenge of getting the organization from 15 to 100 percent completion by developing the formal implementation plan, timelines, and communication processes while troubleshooting the hundreds of roadblocks that come up along the way. A lot of responsibility will rest on this person's shoulders, so you want to make sure that you choose someone with the right mix of skills and experience to lead the initiative successfully. • Consider choosing a change champion from another business unit as a way to cement relationships with other operational areas whose buy-in is particularly critical. Alternatively, consider turning the change champion role into a co-chair opportunity for marketing and IT. Not only does this help to cement IT's buy-in and ongoing participation, it also ensures that the customer voice and the technical expertise are equally represented throughout the process. • Consider appointing someone in your department who is being groomed for a leadership role. This will be a big challenge, and one that will accelerate the maturity and capabilities of the right candidate. • Don't be afraid to look outside the organization to find the right person for the role if you think it will be too much of a stretch for the range of potential candidates in your department. Assigning the responsibility to a consultant can also be a good solution if your department simply lacks the bandwidth to lose a vital team member to the role. • Ideally, you will be able to appoint someone with both people skills and technical knowledge; the change champion needs to be someone who can build consensus and keep the group motivated, as well as plan and deploy technology. However, if you have to choose between the two, pick soft- skill efficacy over pure technical knowledge. You can always hire additional support to supplement the hard skills, but the person at the helm needs to know how to collaborate, motivate, and mediate to push this initiative through. This is your final commitment point. This is where the blueprint becomes a fully-resourced growth engine.

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