The 4 Roles That Make or Break Change Initiatives

Choosing the right people at the start of a change management initiative is critical to long-term success. Champions, Sponsors, PMs, and SMEs provide the authority, alignment, and reinforcement required to move change from intention to execution.

At Polished Geek, our co-creation model depends on the involvement of these key people, ensuring business leaders and delivery teams are aligned, engaged, and making decisions together from day one.

When these roles are clearly defined up front and actively engaged in co-creation, teams and champions gain real autonomy and ownership over their future solution.

This shared accountability empowers better decision-making during implementation and leads to faster adoption, shorter training and sustained success long after go-live.

4 Roles:

• Executive Sponsor: Authorizes and reinforces change
• Project Manager: Orchestrates delivery
• Champion: Normalizes adoption
• Workflow Expert: Ensures process accuracy

In some organizations, one person may hold 2 or more of the roles above.

1. Executive Sponsor: Authority & Accountability

Select someone who:

• Owns the business outcome the monday․com rollout supports
• Has authority to:
  • Set priorities across teams
  • Allocate resources
  • Enforce adoption expectations
• Is respected and listened to by other leaders
• Is willing to be visible (kickoff, milestone check-ins, reinforcement messages)
• Can remove organizational blockers quickly

Avoid selecting someone who:

• Delegates all decisions
• Is supportive “in theory” but unavailable
• Lacks influence across affected teams

Ideal titles:

• VP Operations, COO, VP PMO, Head of Revenue, Department Head

2. Project Manager: Coordination & Execution

Select someone who:

• Has strong organizational and communication skills
• Can manage:
  • Schedules and milestones
  • Scope decisions
  • Cross-functional dependencies
• Is empowered to make day-to-day decisions
• Understands internal constraints and team capacity
• Is comfortable holding stakeholders accountable for inputs and timelines

Avoid selecting someone who:

• Has no authority to resolve conflicts
• Is already overloaded with other initiatives
• Is unfamiliar with internal decision-making processes

Ideal profiles

• Internal PM, Ops Manager, PMO lead, Implementation lead
• Present and engaged in early in co-creation*, especially key meetings

3. Champion(s): Adoption & Enablement

Select people who:

• Are well-respected by peers (credibility matters more than title)
• Are curious, tech-comfortable, and eager to learn
• Understand how work actually gets done day-to-day
• Are proactive problem-solvers
• Are willing to:
  • Learn monday․com deeply
  • Model best practices
  • Support peers post-launch

Avoid selecting people who:

• Were chosen solely because they are “available”
• Lack influence or enthusiasm
• Are resistant to process change

Best practices:

• 1-2 Champions per ~20-30 people, depending on how much time they have available for training and enablement, answering questions and creating small optimizations.
• Fully engaged early in co-creation*, not just training

4. Workflow Experts: Process Accuracy & Fit

Select people who:

• Are true subject matter experts in their workflows
  • Know:
  • Exceptions
  • Edge cases
  • Real-world constraints
• Are trusted by their teams to represent “how work really happens”
• Can articulate pain points and improvement opportunities
• Are open to refining processes (not overly attached to legacy ways)

Avoid selecting people who:

• Only understand the process at a high level
• Are disconnected from daily execution
• Default to “we’ve always done it this way”

Best practices:

• 1–2 Workflow Experts per functional workflow or team
• Fully engaged in early in co-creation,

What does “Co-Creation” mean?

Co-creation is how we ensure your team can own and evolve the system long after implementation

Our goal at Polished Geek is to help you learn the "monday Mindset." By Co-creating your monday environment together, we ensure that after the engagement, you can take new processes and know how to adapt monday․com to do that.

We build with you.

That means…

Your "Homework" May Include:

Polished Geek Work

Need Assistance?

At Polished Geek, we help organizations build lasting capability through well-designed, well-adopted monday.com systems. Our co-creation model brings Executive Sponsors, Project Managers, Champions, and Workflow Experts into the work from day one to design, build, and optimize workflows that reflect how your business actually operates.

Along the way, we teach your team the monday mindset, enabling them to adapt, extend, and improve their system long after go-live.

If you’re planning a change initiative and want help getting the internal alignment right from day one, book a free consultation with PG to learn how we support faster adoption, stronger ownership, and long-term success.