Everyone knows the power of influencers. Take MrBeast, the most-subscribed YouTube creator with more than 400 million followers. His videos draw billions of views and give him a direct line into consumer behavior that drives rapid conversion. Brands pay millions for a single feature because they can see the return: influence translates directly into measurable business impact.
Inside most organizations, influence is the blind spot. Leaders pour energy into communication plans. They cascade messages through formal reporting lines and rely on authority that comes with title or position. But formal channels are only one part of the equation. Have you considered the informal network of influencers inside your company, their reach, their trust and their impact?
What if you could identify all types of influence in your organization and design programs that are self-reinforcing, where trusted voices drive change?
The Blind Spot in Organizations
Influence is often overlooked because leaders focus their energy elsewhere. CHROs and executives spend countless hours on succession planning, high-potential identification and formal leadership development. Yet there are no mechanisms to identify the informal influencers, the “MrBeasts” of your company, who hold tremendous sway.
Most leaders would agree influence matters, but why do we so rarely engage our informal influence channels?
- Assumptions that it is too difficult to identify informal networks of influence.
- An unconscious bias that a person’s place in the org chart is correlated with their level of influence.
- Influencers themselves often do not see their impact, and therefore do not raise their hand for stretch roles or special assignments.
Unlocking the power of influencers does not just add another tactic to the change playbook. It fundamentally shifts the speed and depth of adoption. This is not theory—the evidence is clear.
The Power of Influencers
Unlocking informal influence is not wishful thinking. It is backed by hard data. Research across multiple organizations shows three consistent truths about hidden influencers:
- Informal leadership builds trust. One study across 32 firms showed that informal leaders had a significant positive impact on trust and team performance.
- A small minority influences the majority. Research from myHRfuture found that roughly three percent of employees can sway up to 85 percent of the workforce.
- Leaders are usually wrong about who the influencers are. A McKinsey study found executives often misidentify them. In one case, store managers overlooked two-thirds of the true influencers in their teams, including three of the top five in their own stores.
The data is unambiguous: informal influence is not intangible. It is measurable, valuable, and one of the most reliable predictors of transformation success.
Example: The Social Butterflies
Several years ago, I was involved in a transformation that changed how more than 1,000 employees worked. Given the scale of the effort, communication and change management were critical to helping teams through the transition. Despite our detailed plans and carefully crafted messages, apathy set in, productivity slipped, and day-to-day operations began to suffer.
To understand what was happening, we used an Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to map how information and influence really moved through the company. The analysis pointed to a small group of employees we called “social butterflies.” These highly connected people touched nearly every corner of the organization. They were not executives or managers. They were the colleagues everyone trusted and turned to for help.
Once we recognized their importance, we shifted our change strategy. We gave these employees early visibility into leadership discussions, more context about the changes, and an active role in shaping communication.
The impact was immediate. The influencers felt recognized and valued. The organization gained faster adoption, stronger engagement and greater trust in leadership.
The lesson: Change accelerates when you engage the people employees already trust.
The Leadership Opportunity
The opportunity is clear: influence is already shaping your organization. The choice is whether to harness it intentionally or leave it to chance.
Any leader running a significant transformation can turn informal influence into a strategic asset. This requires more than a new tactic. It calls for a shift in mindset. Leaders must stop assuming the org chart defines who matters most and start mapping where trust and advice actually flow.
Here is a playbook to make that shift real:
- Surface hidden influencers with Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) or structured surveys to reveal who employees trust for advice and information.
- Activate them early by providing context, listening to feedback and inviting them into the process.
- Elevate their role by giving them visibility, access and a voice, even without formal promotions.
- Sustain the network by monitoring over time, since influence shifts as people move or disengage.
When leaders adopt these practices, influence becomes self-reinforcing. Trusted employees amplify leadership messages, adoption strengthens their credibility and their growing credibility accelerates the next wave of change.
How to Activate Your Influencers
If MrBeast can generate millions in value for external brands, imagine what your hidden influencers could do if you engaged them with the same intentionality. Influence is already at work in your organization. The question is whether it is working for you or against you.
The leaders who learn to activate this hidden network will accelerate adoption, strengthen trust, and turn change into a competitive advantage. If you are ready to begin, we can help you identify and engage the influencers already shaping your organization.
