With thanks to Robert Patterson's Weblog
Understanding how to initiate change is becoming a central issue for our time. Fortunately nature has given us a model that has a much better chance of working than all the change book's ideas so far.
Over the last 2 years I have been seeking the best compression of the ideas of Everett Rogers - the father of Diffusion Theory and his popular disciple Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame.
I have edited a number of other people's work into what I hope is the easiest, most complete and most accessible review of their thinking. This is not my original work but is my original editing!
I hope that this helps you in your change project.
How can you put your organization on the leading edge of the competitive landscape?
It is clear to many leaders that “Business as Usual” is a recipe for organizational failure. Knowing where to go is not enough. The real leadership issue is knowing how to get the rest of the organization to go there.
How do you effect meaningful change? That is the question. How does change really happen?
Change is frustrating for everyone in organizations. Leaders know that often survival depends on change. Most employees however see change only as a threat and resist change. Change is seen by most as involving great effort and that in the end it often fails.
But there is another way of looking at change. What if change was easy and required little effort but needed instead clever use of process? What if we saw change in the same way that disease happens. What if new ideas were like germs and the process of change was like an epidemic? How could you set change on motion by using this concept?
This paper is a consolidation of a number of ideas that support this thesis
Adoption of Internet
Technology
Approximately 37 million US
adults use the Internet from
home on a daily basis
compared to only 19 million
in mid-1997, according to
The Strategis Group. The
Internet is expected to have
250 million users globally
in the next two year. This
level of growth is
tremendous.
Adoption is a key phrase with Internet technology. Adoption is the process of integrating the Internet and its benefits into the life of an individual or organization. It is based on innovation.
Innovativeness is the degree
to which an individual or
other unit of adoption is
relatively early in adopting
new ideas than other members
of a system. Innovativeness
indicates overt behavioral
change. Everett Rogers wrote
a book many consider to be
the leading book on the
Internet and technology
called, 'The Diffusion of
Innovation.' This is how the
curve looks. Note the
gestation period at first
and then the system Tips and
climbs almost effortlessly
if the precinditions for
adoption have been met.
The
social strata for adoption
Rogers stated that the
individuals in a social
system do not adopt an
innovation at the same time.
Rather, they adopt in an
over-time sequence, so that
individuals can be
classified into adopter
categories on the basis of
when they first begin using
a new idea.
♣ Innovators
account for 2.5 percent of
individuals in a system.
♣ Early Adopters account for
13.5 percent.
♣ The Early Majority account
for 34 percent.
♣ The Late Majority also
accounts for 34 percent.
♣ Laggards make up the
remaining 16 percent.
Here we see the diffusion effect from the perspective of how networks form. Some people have more influence than others.
1.
Innovators
Innovators are daring, rash
and risky. They are able to
cope with a high level of
uncertainty. Rogers says,
"While an innovator may not
be respected by the other
members of a local system,
the innovator plays an
important role in the
diffusion process; that of
launching the new idea in
the system by importing the
innovation from outside of
the system's boundaries.
Thus the innovator plays a
gate-keeping role in the
flow of new ideas into a
system."
2. Early Adopters
Opinion leadership is an
important aspect of the
Early Adopter. They often
serve as a role model for
other people. They are more
integrated into society than
the innovators. "The early
adopter is respected by his
or her peers, and is the
embodiment of successful,
discrete use of new ideas.
The early adopter knows that
to continue to earn this
esteem of colleagues and to
maintain a central position
in the communication
networks of the system, he
or she must make judicious
innovation-decisions. The
early adopter decreases
uncertainty about a new idea
by adopting it, and then
conveying a subjective
evaluation of the innovation
to near-peers through
interpersonal networks,"
Rogers said.
3. Early Majority
The early majority adopts
new ideas just before the
average member of a system.
The early majority is the
most numerous adopter
categories, making up
one-third of the members of
a system. Rogers says, "The
early majority may
deliberate for some time
before completely adopting a
new idea. Their
innovation-decision period
is relatively longer than
that of the innovator and
the early adopter. They
follow with deliberate
willingness in adopting
innovations, but seldom
lead."
4. Late Majority
The late majority adopts new
ideas just after the average
member of a system. Like the
early majority, the late
majority makes up one-third
of the members of a system.
Adoption may be both an
economic necessity for the
late majority, and the
result of increasing network
pressures from peers.
"Innovations are approached
with a skeptical and
cautious air, and the late
majority do not adopt until
most others in their system
have done so. The weight of
system norms must definitely
favor an innovation before
the late majority are
convinced. The pressure of
peers is necessary to
motivate adoption," said
Rogers.
5. Laggards
Laggards are the last in a
social system to adopt an
innovation. They possess
almost no opinion
leadership. Rogers says,
"Laggards tend to be
suspicious of innovations
and change agents. Their
innovation-decision process
is relatively lengthy, with
adoption and use lagging far
behind awareness-knowledge
of a new idea. Resistance to
innovations on the part of
laggards may be entirely
rational from the laggards'
viewpoint, as their
resources are limited and
they must be certain that a
new idea will not fail
before they can adopt."
How does understanding
the Tipping Point help us
make this shift?
THE
TIPPING POINT IS:
Is the one dramatic moment
in an epidemic when
everything can change all at
once.
Is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point, a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is a certainty.
They are like epidemics...
Tip because of the extraordinary efforts of a few select carriers. But they also sometimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself.
Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
They are another example of geometric progression: when a virus spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles again into infinity. Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating
This is How
SARS spread in Toronto -
note the match to the
classic curve.
The curve is not imaginary -
it is a given.
They (Epidemics) have clear examples of contagious behavior. They both have little changes that make big effects. It takes only the smallest of changes to shatter an epidemic's equilibrium.
They happen in a hurry.
This is the most important trait, because it is the principle that makes sense of the first two and that permits the greatest insight into why modern change happens the way it does.
Epidemics involve straightforward simple things; a "product" However, I see it as a way to spark revolution and a message.
In order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first. Contagiousness is in larger part a function of the messenger. Stickiness is primarily a property of the message.
THE
LAW OF THE FEW
There are exceptional people
out there who are capable of
starting epidemics. All you
have to do is find them.
With an epidemic, a tiny
majority of the people does
the work. Once critical
factor in epidemics is the
nature of the messenger.
Messengers make something
spread.
Word of mouth is still the most important form of human communication. Rumors are the most contagious of all social messages.
Connectors
♣ People with a special gift
for bringing the world
together, people specialists
♣ Know lots of people
♣ Have an extraordinary
knack of making friends and
acquaintances, making social
connections.
♣ Have mastered the "weak
tie"; a friendly, yet casual
social connection.
♣ Manage to occupy many
different worlds and
subcultures and niches. By
having a foot in so many
different worlds, they have
the effect of bringing them
all together.
♣ Acquaintances represent a
source of social power, and
the more acquaintances you
have the more powerful you
are.
♣ Social glue: they spread
the message
Mavens
♣ Information specialists
♣ Once they figure out how
to get that great deal, they
want to tell you about it
too.
♣ Solves his own problems,
his own emotional needs, by
solving other people's
problems.
♣ Have knowledge and the
social skills to start
word-of-mouth epidemics.
♣ A teacher and a student
♣ In a social epidemic,
Mavens are data banks. They
provide the message.
Salespeople
• Have the skills to
persuade when we are
unconvinced of what we are
hearing.
• Little things can make as
much of a difference as big
things.
• Gives nonverbal clues that
are more important than
verbal clues.
Processes
"Interactional synchrony":
human interaction has a
rhythmic physical dimension.
We dance to each other's
speech…we're perfectly in
harmony.
Motor mimicry: we imitate each other's emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other. Emotion is contagious. "Senders" are very good at expressing emotions and feelings. They are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.
Persuasion often works in ways that we do not appreciate. You draw others into your own rhythms and dictate the terms of the interaction.
THE
STICKINESS FACTOR
There is a simple way to
package information that,
under the right
circumstances, can make it
irresistible/sticky and
compels a person into
action. All you have to do
is find it. In order to be
capable of sparking
epidemics, ideas have to be
memorable and move us into
action. Content of the
message matters too.
1. What is needed is a
subtle but significant
change in presentation to
make most messages stick.
2. The elements that make an
idea sticky turn out to be
small and trivial.
3. "Clutter" has made it
harder and harder to get any
one message to stick. The
information age has created
a stickiness problem.
4. Pay careful attention to
the structure and format of
your material, and you can
dramatically enhance
stickiness.
5. Can tip a message by
tinkering, on the margin,
with the presentation of
their ideas THE POWER OF
CONTEXT
We don't necessarily
appreciate that our inner
states are the result of our
outer circumstances. We are
more than just sensitive to
changes in context. We're
exquisitely sensitive to
them. And the kinds of
contextual changes that are
capable of tipping an
epidemic are very different
than we might ordinarily
suspect. The impetus to
engage in a certain kind of
behaviour is not coming from
a certain kind of person but
from a feature of the
environment.
1. Small changes in context
can be just as important in
tipping epidemics.
2. An environmental
argument.
3. What really matters is
little things "Broken
Windows Theory": in a city,
relatively minor problems
like graffiti, public
disorder, and aggressive
panhandling, are all the
equivalent of broken
windows, invitations to more
serious crimes (Rudy
Gulliani's belief)
4. An epidemic can be
reversed/tipped by tinkering
with the smallest details of
the immediate environment.
5. There are specific
situations so powerful that
they can overwhelm our
inherent predispositions.
6. Human beings invariably
make the mistake of
overestimating the
importance of fundamental
character traits and
underestimating the
importance of the situation
and context. We are a lot
more attuned to personal
cues than contextual cues.
7. Character is more like a
bundle of habits and
tendencies and interests,
loosely bound together and
dependent, at certain times,
on circumstances and
context.
8. The convictions of your
heart and the actual
contents of your thoughts
are less important, in the
end, in guiding your actions
then the immediate context
of your behavior.
THE MAGIC NUMBER 150
"There seems to be some
limitation built into us
either by learning or by the
design of the nervous
systems, a limit that keeps
our channel capacities in
this general range (i.e. the
human minds inability to
comprehend things beyond
sets 7)" —George Miller "The
Magical Number Seven"
"The figure
of 150 seems to represent
the maximum number of
individuals with whom we can
have a genuinely social
relationship, the kind of
relationship that goes with
knowing who they are and how
they relate to us. Putting
it another way, it's the
number of people you would
not feel embarrassed about
joining uninvited for a
drink if you happened to
bump into them in a bar."
—Robin Dunbar,
1. Even relatively small
increases in the size of a
group [beyond 150] create a
significant additional
social and intellectual
burden.
2. The rule of 150 suggests
that the size of a group is
another one of those subtle
contextual factors that can
make a big difference.
3. Peer pressure is much
more powerful than a concept
of a boss
4. Transactive memory: we
store information with other
people. Since mental energy
is limited, we concentrate
on what we do best.
5. Groups of 150 are an
organized mechanism that
makes it far easier for new
ideas and information moving
around the organization to
tip; to go from one person
or one part of the group to
the entire group all at
once.
CONCLUSION
First Lesson of the
Tipping Point
Starting epidemics requires
concentrating resources on a
few key areas. Your
resources ought to be solely
concentrated on the
Connectors, Mavens, and
Salesmen.
Second Lesson of the Tipping
Point
The world does not accord
with our intuition. Those
who are successful at
creating social epidemics do
not just do what they think
is right. They deliberately
test their intuitions.
Important Conclusion!
What must underlie
successful epidemics, in the
end, is a bedrock belief
that change is possible,
that people can radically
transform their behavior or
beliefs in the face of the
right kind of impetus.
Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push; just in the right place; it can be tipped.