The importance of intelligent use of opinion leaders would be hard to overstate. This point refers to both external and internal opinion leaders and informal centers of power. If you don’t properly cultivate and nourish your relationship and communications with opinion leaders, you will likely cause resentment in their ranks, and be taking more than one step toward failure of any initiative you are pushing. Human beings by nature tend to look to opinion leaders to supply them with their information/decisions and/or to validate information they have received from other sources. If such opinion leaders are not working on your behalf to affect the opinions of your relevant constituencies, they are either unaware of your existence, or actively working against you. In either case, their effort or lack of effort does not work in your favor. Work hard to identify the formal and informal sources of power and information that are reference groups (or individuals) for your relevant constituencies, and spend whatever time and effort is necessary to put them on your “team”. It will be time and effort extremely well spent..
