The most important part of being a change agent isn’t the brilliant ideas you have. It’s about your ability to get others to get on board with them.

That’s one thing that became clear as I spoke with two association leaders for a recent Associations Now Deep Dive article on change management. Natasha L. Rankin, MBA, CAE, joined the Irrigation Association as CEO with a lot of big-picture ideas about what she wanted to accomplish quickly. (She shared a spreadsheet with me. It’s thorough, smart, and ambitious.) But the urgent challenge wasn’t a matter of big strategic goals; it was about getting staffers, who felt they had to be “on” 24/7, less stressed around communication.