Using Influencers to Drive Your Learning Strategy

Whether it's a Kardashian, an athlete, or someone documenting an improbably photogenic life abroad, influencers are hard to avoid. The images are appealing enough that most of us have felt at least a flicker of envy. That's the job, selling an idea, a lifestyle, or a product.

But influence isn't a social media phenomenon. It's a human one, and every organization has people who have it.

This piece is about identifying those people internally and engaging them to drive change and advance a learning strategy.

The reason it matters is something most L&D leaders learn painfully. The organizational chart tells you who has authority. It tells you almost nothing about who has influence. There is someone on every team whose opinion determines whether a new initiative gets genuinely adopted or quietly ignored, and that person frequently has no formal power at all. Roll something out without them and you'll get compliance. Roll it out with them and you'll get adoption.

This connects to organizational empowerment, meaning giving people real authority to decide and act without seeking approval, so they can bring their own intelligence, experience, intuition, and creativity to the work.

The uncomfortable implication for anyone running a learning function is that your communication plan is probably built around the org chart. Influence doesn't follow it.

For L&D and change leaders who've watched a well-designed initiative fail to take hold and couldn't work out why.