Let's develop an image for another dimension of your system. In this case, we're looking at power and authority. So what we're going to do rather than look from above down on your organization, we're going to step back from the organization and look at a side view. Think about how many layers or levels that you've got in your organization's hierarchy. What do you call each of those levels, and roughly how many people are in each of those layers? Here's an example.

One organization had one executive, four directors, eight managers, 22 supervisors, 255 employees. And they also had 150 contractors that they were using at that point as well. So I'd like you to find worksheet number four, or if you're working with a group of people use a flip chart sheet and start by building your stack of power and authority. So just push pause, and now Yours out. Okay, so now you've got your stack of organizational hierarchy, with the titles, or the roles and an approximate number of people. What I'd like you to do is to find that group of people that has the largest number, and in this example, it would be the employees, in this case, 255.

People. I'd like you to think about leading change from the employees perspective, who is their most trusted source of information? Who is the most important leader to the employees? And of course, it's not the executives. It's not directors, not even the managers. It's really the supervisors.

The question then when it comes to power and authority is how good a job is your organization doing it, setting those supervisors up for success so that they indeed can be the leaders that the employees want and need them to be when it comes to making change in the local work area.