Change champions and champion networks

In plain terms

A change champion is the person on the team who is visibly for the change, knows how it works, and helps colleagues use it. When the role is added to a normal job, it also adds to that person's load.

In this entry, a champion network means spreading that role out. Instead of one sponsor at the top, there is someone in each team, site or shift who can answer questions, show how the change works in that setting, and report back what is not working.

The idea is close to the change agent, but narrower. A change agent can be anyone who leads change work, including an outside consultant. A champion is often an insider, chosen or self-selected, and in the opinion leader studies the influence comes from being trusted by peers.

Where it came from

Research on champions in innovation goes back at least to Howell and Higgins (1990), who published Champions of Technological Innovation in Administrative Science Quarterly, a widely cited early paper on the topic.

In health care, a separate stream tested local opinion leaders as a way to spread evidence-based practice among professionals (Flodgren et al., 2019). That stream produced most of the controlled studies described below.

By the 2010s the word was everywhere and meant different things. Miech and colleagues (2018) reviewed 199 articles on champions in health care implementation published from 1980 to 2016. They found the term used inconsistently across topics, job positions and organizational roles, and found that more champion articles were published in 2015 and 2016 alone than in the first 30 years of their review window, 1980 to 2009.

What the research says

The research falls into three groups, and they support different strengths of claim.

Trials of opinion leaders. Flodgren, O'Brien, Parmelli and Grimshaw (2019), a Cochrane review, pooled 24 studies covering more than 337 hospitals, 350 primary care practices and 3,005 health care professionals. Opinion leader interventions probably improve professionals' compliance with evidence-based practice, by a median of 10.8 percentage points (interquartile range 3.5 to 14.6), rated moderate-certainty evidence. Whether they improve patient outcomes is uncertain, because that evidence was very low certainty. Every study was in a high-income country, most in North America.

Who the champion is matters. Lam and Schaubroeck (2000), a field experiment rated Medium in the evidence library behind the Unfrozen Loop, compared three matched bank branches before and after a service-quality training program. The branch that used opinion leaders as frontline service-quality leaders was rated significantly higher on service effectiveness than a branch that used randomly selected frontline leaders, and that branch in turn improved more than a branch with no frontline leaders. The difference between leader types appeared to run through tellers' beliefs about the program. It is one comparison of three branches, so it shows a pattern, not a general rule.

Reviews of champions in general. Santos and colleagues (2022) reviewed 35 quantitative studies of champions in health care. Most studies simply recorded whether a champion was present. In a subset of seven, five found associations between exposure to champions and more use of best practices, programs or technologies at the organizational level. For use by patients or providers, and for outcomes, the evidence was mixed or scarce, and the authors call for research that can establish cause. Miech and colleagues (2018) found only four studies that randomly assigned the presence or absence of champions.

How champions work. Qualitative studies describe what effective champions do. Shaw and colleagues (2012) studied eight primary care practices and distinguished project champions from organizational change champions; practices with both, complementing each other, were best able to implement and sustain diabetes care processes. Bonawitz and colleagues (2020) compared champions in 11 US maternity hospitals and named six attributes that mattered: influence, ownership, physical presence at the point of change, persuasiveness, grit and a participative leadership style. Pettersen, Eide and Berg (2024), reviewing 23 studies of technology implementation, found that a firm place for the role in the organization was crucial, and concluded that champions can contribute most with a clear mandate, dedicated time and training.

Networks. Battilana and Casciaro (2012), studying 68 change initiatives in the UK's National Health Service, found that change agents whose contacts were not tightly connected to one another, a pattern called structural holes, had an easier time with changes that departed far from the status quo, and a harder time with less divergent changes. In that study, the network position that helped depended on how big a departure the change was.

Where the evidence is thin

Almost all the controlled evidence comes from health care, and most of it is about clinicians adopting a specific clinical practice. Whether the same effect holds for an IT system, a reorganization or a new operating model is not shown in these studies.

The research also says little about the cost to the champion. The abstracts of the reviews cited here report little on it, though Santos and colleagues note that opportunity costs may be associated with using champions.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

Champions are one practical way to run three parts of the Unfrozen Loop.

• Surface both ways. A champion in each team is a route for bad news and ideas to travel up, not only for plans to travel down. That only works if the champion is asked what is going wrong, not only told to promote.
• Start it close to the work. Opinion leaders are people colleagues already trust at the work, which fits the idea in Part 3 that a change should be run close to the work.
• The middle's own weather. Where champion duties are added to a job, they add load. Part 5 asks leaders to take something off the plate of the people carrying a change, and that applies to champions too.

Common misreadings

"Any enthusiastic volunteer will do." In one study of three bank branches, Lam and Schaubroeck (2000) found opinion leaders did better than randomly selected leaders. That study did not test volunteers, so it cannot say how enthusiasm compares with influence.

"Champions guarantee adoption." The Cochrane estimate is a median gain of about 11 percentage points in compliance, with a range that includes small effects. That is worth having. It is not a guarantee.

"Champions are a communications channel." Shaw and colleagues (2012) describe project champions and organizational change champions with distinct roles, and Pettersen and colleagues (2024) found that a firm place for the role in the organization is crucial. A network that only forwards messages is not what these studies describe.

Using it well

Find the people colleagues already ask. Before naming champions, ask each team who they go to when a system or process does not make sense. Pick from those names.

Give the role a mandate and time. Write down what each champion can decide, who they escalate to, and what comes off their plate while they do this.

Make it two-way. Meet champions on a regular rhythm and start each meeting with what is not working in their area. Send those answers up unedited, and tell champions what changed as a result.

Match the network to the change. For a change that breaks sharply with how things are done, one study of change agents (Battilana and Casciaro, 2012) found that those who connected otherwise separate groups did better, which is a reason to consider such champions.