When a leader with long tenure and lots of chips in the bank supports a new idea, its odds of gaining a fair hearing skyrocket. So do its odds of success.

But what happens if you don’t have much tenure or a pile of chips in the bank? What if you’re the new kid on the block? What if you’re stuck in the middle of the food chain? What if you’re at the top, but facing significant pockets of resistance from people who think you shouldn’t be at the top?

Does that mean innovation has to wait as you gain respectability and credibility? Must it be left for others?

Not at all.

Certainly it will be harder to pull off. But it’s not impossible.

The key is to find the people in your organization who have the tenure or the chips to make a difference, and then enlist them for the cause. Because no innovation or significant change ever succeeds without a respected champion.

Every organization has a natural, knee-jerk resistance to change. It’s human nature. Whenever we are presented with any kind of change, most of us immediately focus on what we might lose, especially in terms of power, prestige, and preference.

We don’t start out asking, “How will this impact our mission?”

We immediately think, “How will this impact me?”

That’s where a respected champion comes into play. A respected champion has a unique ability to calm the troops, reframe the dialogue, and minimize resistance because of his or her wealth of credibility and trust. When a respected champion speaks, people listen. They may still have qualms about the proposed changes, but most folks will give a respected champion the benefit of the doubt. They’ll support (or at least stop resisting) whatever he or she supports.

I learned this lesson in the early years of my ministry. I was facing strong opposition to some much needed changes. People started leaving the church, questioning my motives, and assailing my judgment. At one point, it got so bad that I lay awake at night wondering whether the board was going to fire me.

I had zero chips in the bank. Not only was I new to the church; I was new to the job. I’d never been a senior pastor before. I was twenty-eight years old. I was the antithesis of a respected champion.

To make matters worse, I was under the false impression that good ideas should stand on their own. I didn’t realize that having a respected champion is just as important as having a great idea, that the credibility of the spokesman can be more important than the validity of the message.

During one particularly difficult time, my mentor showed up. He was a highly esteemed sage, revered for his years of service, and considered by all to be a man of peculiar wisdom and insight. He met with a couple of board members who had become increasingly resistant to my leadership and ideas. They were old enough to be my father, successful in their chosen careers, unsure of my long-term commitment to the church, and certain that I was pushing things too hard, too fast.

At one point, my mentor asked me to explain all the changes I wanted to make and why I thought they were so important. After I’d finished, he said, “I think Larry’s right. You ought to do these things. He’s got a lot of ideas worth considering. Listen to him.”

Bam. Everything changed.

After a little more discussion, the two board members not only green-lighted the changes I wanted to make; they publically supported them.

It was all a bit mind-boggling.

After all, nothing had changed. My proposals were exactly the same. They hadn’t been retooled, restated, or implemented differently. The only difference was that now I had the support of a respected champion.

I have never forgotten that lesson. From that day on, I’ve made it a priority to identify a respected champion before proposing any kind of significant change or innovation. It doesn’t matter if I have the best idea since flushed toilets; without a respected champion supporting it, I won’t move forward.

After three decades of ministry at North Coast, I now have the tenure and chips to qualify as a respected champion. But I still look to others. While it’s true that you can have only one champion in the ring, when it comes to innovation and significant change, you can never have too many champions for the cause.

Excerpted from Innovation’s Dirty Little Secret by Larry Osborne