All organizations have their internal communications leaders, who are usually persuasive and influential. However, the organizations of the future will not be characterized by vertical, impersonal, and simultaneously individualistic influencers, but rather by the cultural confluence generated by communities of meaning and belonging. These are the new confluencers (read more).

The great challenge for organizations today is managing cultural change and defining the strategic role of Human Resources and internal communication in this process, all of which is framed within the context of how to influence the existing culture so that it can be modified, so that we can change it.

Since the 40s and 50s, and largely through the work of sociologists Paul K. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, it has been insistently argued that every process of change in an environment is linked to the capacity for influence of those who must promote it, an influence that used to be considered eminently personal, that of opinion leaders, that is, the leaders of a thought that at some point "crystallizes" in the projected cultural scenario.

However, paradoxical and even unusual it may seem, almost 80 years later influence is still explained in the same way, and the experience of influencers on social networks, which has become the model of all influence, has radicalized this personalistic, and above all individualistic, perspective: it is always specific people who influence our behavior thanks to millions of followers, and we "react" to each of their actions and comments - as they say - in a clear demonstration of a lack of proactivity on our part.

In the case of organizations and their culture, the narrative of a founding myth unequivocally associated with a mythical founding figure is still in force: the mystique of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Reed Hastings, Elon Musk… and although it is true that these leaders leave an indelible mark on the culture of their organizations, and not only in their beginnings, it is also true that the way an organizational culture develops and grows is not that of a stimulus-response model, of inputs and outputs, so perhaps the time has come to rethink influence as confluence: the confluencers.

What are confluencers, and what are their main characteristics?

First of all, they are not unique individuals, much less heroic myths, but simply - and this is no small thing - communities of meaning and belonging, areas in which interests converge and are managed transversally, and in which bonds, relationships, and harmony matter more than thoughts and consensus.

Secondly, the authority of these communities of confluencers does not cause automatic behaviors, it facilitates thoughtful and felt behaviors by activating motivations and attitudes.

Thirdly, a confluencer means being endowed with great social and emotional intelligence, certainly not independent of an equally high IQ, but which is more than the result of the sum of the IQs of its members, since due to the effect of synergy it is the product of a multiplication much more than a sum, just the opposite of what happens with the one-person model of the influencer, whose maximum capacity to influence is related to the lesser capacity of others to resist that influence.

Finally, and fourthly, confluencer communities exert a slow, prudent, and patient influence, focused as much on results as on processes and functions, something also very different from the influencer model, which seeks above all the effect and in the shortest possible period of time.

There is increasing evidence within academic literature in the fields of Human Resources, internal communication and change management that cultural transformations take place in a systemic way, and that communication is the process that most influences and converges in culture.

Thus, promoting and creating creative, innovative, intuitive, and collaborative work teams, rather than empowering supposedly charismatic individuals, is the most fruitful way for 21st-century organizations to reinvent themselves without following an already obsolete 20th-century model, because, as Albert Einstein wisely and astutely stated, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”