As a leader, you often need to lead initiatives.

Or create movements.

Here are 3 things you can do to herd cats and lead change:

1. Give it a name

Cheesy as this might sound, but giving the initiative a name make it much easier for people to refer to, relate to, to share, etc. “Project Beanbag” is far easy to refer to than “that secret project, you know, that one?”

2. Tell everyone about it, talk about it, over and over

The key here is make sure you rehearse and finesse your pitch. Listen to presidential candidates, or authors on book tours. They are very good at succinctly making their pitches. Even comedians are good examples to learn from. They are particularly good at delivering the same jokes DIFFERENTLY every night.

Reward it, often, out loud, publicly, precisely

This is the most important. You must reward behaviours that support the initiatives in order to maintain the momentum. This is particularly hard because the difficulties lie not within the act of rewarding, but in accurately identifying the right behaviours.