Every organization has them. People who are not necessarily the loudest in the room or the most senior on the org chart, but whose opinions move people. Colleagues trust them. When they say something matters, it lands.

These are your informal influencers, or as we call them inside Innovisor: your change catalysts, because they can catalyze your change if you activate and engage them.

And most leaders have no idea who they are.

Leaders who identify their change catalysts gain a real advantage, but today’s influencers may not be tomorrow’s.

The ability to absorb, adopt, and sustain change does not maintain itself. That’s why our clients work with us to ensure they are change fit.

One of its most critical exercises in staying change fit is knowing the right informal influencers to activate, when needed, across the organization.

This change leader of a 1,000-person company understood this. And made the right call.

The company had grown by 50% since the original identification of the change catalysts. New people. New teams. New parts of the company that had never been part of the change movement.

Yet 70% of the original change catalysts were still with the company.

On paper, that looks like an asset. In practice, it raised a harder question for this change leader:

Were these 70% still the best employees to activate in the company that was now fundamentally different?

The change leader did not assume. He asked. And the data gave him the answer he needed to act wisely.

The change leader had two options in front of him:

The case for it was real. These were people the change leader and his transformation office had already invested in. They had been activated and engaged. There was a level of trust between the informal influencers from the past, them and the company’s leadership. And that trust was not built overnight. It took time, intention, and consistent follow-through.

Starting over, therefore, means losing that investment of activation. But looking at the new data, informal influence flows had changed in this larger company. With 50% growth, the reach of the legacy influencer had shrunk across the company. The parts of the company that were new, where the people who had joined since the last identification of the change catalysts, were not influenced by them.

A new identification would reflect the company as it is today, not as it was. It would surface the change catalysts with informal influence embedded in the new parts of the company. On top of that, it could help identify employees with untapped energy. Employees who had never been asked to contribute to the change agenda before. That, in itself, is a powerful signal to send.

A fresh group of change catalysts also brings a fresh perspective. Without the assumptions and habits that can quietly build up over time, they would come to the change agenda with new eyes.

The trade-off was equally real. A new group of change catalysts required time for activation before change could move forward.

70% of the existing group were still at the company, with some if them being promoted into managerial positions. This was a great sign of retention and recognition.

However, a promotion changes something fundamental: formal authority replaces informal influence as the primary currency. The ability to influence people through trust and peer connection had shifted. Together, they now only influenced 50% of the larger company.

Influence on less than half

And look at where they reached with their influence. The group of former change catalysts – shown in red – had gravitated toward the centre of the company. They had not grown apart from each other. They had grown together and away from the rest of the organization.

This is a change fitness problem. A company where informal influence is concentrated in the core and absent from the periphery is not fit to change at scale.

The change leader chose to identify a new group.

Not because the existing change catalysts had failed. Quite the opposite. It was because he understood something that many change leaders miss:

Informal influence is not a fixed asset. It is a reflection of where trust and connection live in the company right now.

And his company right now was not the same as it was before.

The new group of change catalysts – about 3% of the current workforce – influenced the same 85% of the company. Even while the company had grown by 50%.

Yes! The activation needed to start again. But he knew from the data that he and his transformation would start in the right places. Making the company fit for change!

If your company has grown, restructured, or simply moved on, your networks have changed. A new group of people collectively holds a powerful influence on all others. The question is whether you know who it is.

Staying ‘change fit’ is not a one-time exercise. It is an ongoing discipline.

Change fitness starts with knowing who really moves your company today.