If I ask you, do you need to change?
And you said to me, "No", I'd be
worried, you know?
Like you think you've figured
everything out, like emotionally,
professionally, all your
relationships, everything's golden.
Oh, OK.
How's that working out for you, you
know?
I think the answer is always yes,
which is to view ourselves or
our organizations as works in
progress.
You know, that is an infinite
mindset.
Infinite mindset is fundamentally
constant improvement.
So, you know, there's big change,
there's little change, there's
tweaks, there's dramatic change.
Sometimes it's reacting to changing
cultures, changes
in culture, politics, technology,
you know, sometimes the change is
our own, sometimes we have to react
to it.
But I think the honest
answer is yes, we have to change.
There's always opportunity to
improve something.
So there's this notion in businesses
that people fear change,
which is just fundamentally not
true.
People fear sudden change,
you know?
But incremental change is not
threatening.
People fear change
that threatens them, right?
And very often the way we change
manage is we
do lots of PowerPoint presentations
about what's coming.
"Don't worry,
and we have all these things," and
we treat it very rationally.
And what we're ignoring is the
emotional response.
Now there are some people who
love change.
It's an infinite minded
thing to embrace uncertainty,
to see opportunity in surprise.
For some people, especially people
who have been who have gotten
good at doing something for 10
years, 20 years,
that all of a sudden you say you're
going to change it, they fear.
Again, there's that emotional word.
They FEAR that
they won't know how to or
it will set them back.
And so no number of rational
assurances will
help them get over that.
At some point we have
to just let them go through the
process.
The law of diffusion is a theory
that was proposed in the
50s or 60s by Emmett Rogers,
and basically all populations shift
across the standard deviation of the
old bell curve.
If you have high performers, you
have low performers, et cetera,
stuff like that.
And with a law of diffusion tells
us, is that the first two and a half
percent of your population or your
innovators?
These are your big idea
people.
Elon Musk, Steve Jobs,
right?
Then you have 13 and a half percent
of your population that are your
early adopters.
These are the people who are willing
to
pay a premium, suffer an
inconvenience, extend the extra
energy to be a part of something
that reflects their own beliefs.
Stand in line to see Star Wars a
week before it comes out.
Even though you can just wait two or
three weeks and buy a ticket and go
in.
For them, it's worth it.
Right?
And then you have your early and
late majority who are
more cynical, more practical.
"What's in it for me?
What guarantee
am I going to have?
What happens if
it goes wrong?
Will I get my money
back?"
Like that kind of stuff.
You know?
You ever seen the YouTube video of
the guy dancing solo
and the early adopters come
and then the next.
Everyone's
coming, and that's a movement, right?
That's a great example of how it
works.
Now, amplify that to an
organization.
The innovator is the person who came
up with the idea, the person who
first started dancing and other
people said, "You're an idiot."
Right?
But a small group said, "I mean,
but it's funny.
You know, we'll give it a try."
And
then before you know it, it's a
perfect example of how law of
diffusions work and how tipping
points work.
When we try to effect
change inside an organization we
obviously want to affect the bill
won't affect the majority of the
company.
But that's not how change happens
because the majority will not
try something until someone has
tried it first.
They're risk
intolerant.
And so what you actually want to do
is aim for the early adopters.
You aim for the people who go right,
"It's not perfect.
I'll give it a try."
And if you
can get that 15
to 18 percent market penetration,
it just tips.
Again, because someone else has
tried it, it's happened.
And so the way you affect change in
an organization is not to thrust it
upon everybody because you're going
to get massive resistance from the
majority, but rather
identify the pockets of early
adopters, individuals and
teams, that are willing to try
this new thing that you want to try,
get the kinks out, and then before
you know it what ends up happening
is the majority starts getting angry
like, "Why weren't we given this?"
Well, that's called demand.
We love that.
So it's about building demand and
creating that tipping point.
That's a more effective way to
create sticky change.