The New Key Players: The Change Agent
The Connected Generation Podcast: The New Key Players: The Change Agent, Episode 60
In this week’s podcast in the New Key Players series we look at the Change Agent. This renegade group of innovators push your business to new heights with their treasure hunting skills and out-of-the-box thinking. But let’s face it—they walk, skip, leap and fly to the beat of a different drum, which means that they can sometimes seem out of sync with your brand’s rhythm. Although that may be frustrating for some, remember that Change Agents are a necessary player in today’s fast-changing marketplace.
If you’re a Change Agent then you know that you can sometimes have a love/hate relationship with your team members, managers or partners. Although change is a necessary step in progress and innovation, brands often find themselves navigating in unknown territory to stay ahead of the curve. This can be both scary and risky but don’t shoot the messenger.
Excerpt from Mind Your X’s and Y’s:
The Change Agent
“Explorers who constantly push the limits, change agents are maverick thinkers who listen from both the inside and outside and chart a brave new course for success. They tend to have interesting, unusual networks and instinctively know what’s going on at the fringes. Change agents love to take risks and take notice of the underground rumblings. They’re also expert code-breakers who see parallels in divergent places.
Change agents will ensure that your organization stays fresh and evolves with the brand community. They take a highly strategic view of the operations and dream up new ways to work smarter, more effectively and to do just about anything more creatively. Their job description may be difficult to pin down, but they are a critical source of intuitive, investigative brand intelligence.
Change agents move seamlessly between customers, entry-level workers and top executives. They develop great relationships and partnerships that always seem to pay off in the most surprising, serendipitous ways. Sometimes these “undercover” thinkers may not have the hard-and-fast facts to back up their plans, but their ideas are always worth exploring. Change agents will notice and make inspired connections that are right on target—and ahead of the competition.
Change agents’ core competencies include:
• noticing
• feeling
• understanding
• exploring
• trying
• influencing
• risk taking
• connecting
As children, change agents were:
• Not the most popular kids, but able to infiltrate any group.
• Always blazing new trails, so they preferred to work on the side rather than the center.
• Treasure hunters and decoders of secrets.
• Influencers who started new trends or whose quirky activities or ideas built a loyal following.
• Chameleons who were equally at home with grandparents, siblings, the corner store owner and the babysitter down the street.
Change agents three-question toolkit:
• What is happening that no one else is seeing?
• How could we push the edges and the limits?
• What are people not telling us?”
This post was written by Lisa Johnson
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