What makes an effective change agent?
Early on I gave a talk to the Third Floor group. I said, “There are 200 people in this room, and you’re all going to be A’s. Some of you are going to be ambassadors — people who can help your colleagues understand what we’re doing, explain the benefits, move them forward. And some of you are going to be assassins — people who will kill our chances for success.” It turns out we also had a few Z’s — zealots. Some people took to this work like you wouldn’t believe. What’s the difference between an ambassador and an assassin? A change agent needs courage, flexibility, balance, humor. Balance is probably the most important. There are so many times when you get really excited, then really depressed. Most of our people had those qualities. We had very few outright failures. There are two skills I wish we had more of. One is the ability to communicate verbally with different types of audiences. It’s a rare skill. Change agents have to be able to reach people, and they can’t use the same lan
