Who should leaders pay more attention to as they work on some change effort: supporters or resistors? My advice to leaders involved in change efforts is to pay most attention to the early supporters. I tell them not to focus on the “nay-sayers,” even though this may seem to be the natural thing to do. I encourage any change leader to listen to those who don’t support the change as they may have good insights, but work with the supporters to win over the majority. My advice is based on the advantage of building upon the strength and energy of supporters rather than expending all the effort (and social capital) to address the concerns of those resisting change.
Now there is new research that offers additional reasons why this is a good strategy for leading change or shaping opinions in any arena. Investigators at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute have found that if just 10% of a group holds an unshakeable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority. The research was done by members of the Social Cognitive Networks Research Center. They employed various computer models to determine the tipping point at which a minority belief becomes accepted by the majority. This finding is seen as having many implications for the adoption of new ideas and spread of innovations as well as for political campaigns. As one of the study’s authors, Szymanski, Sreenivasan, concludes,
“As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change.” “People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn’t change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10.”
I believe that the recent ascendency of the Tea Party movement’s influence in Congress supports this point. According to one recent estimate, there are 56 Tea Party members in Congress. The112th Congress has 435 members. The Tea Party therefore accounts for 13%, or just enough supporters to influence the views of the whole Congress.
I am glad I do not advise political leaders on change initiatives, but the implication for other change and influence efforts seems clear. You should work to strengthen the commitment of the early adopters of the change. Reinforce their support and help them spread their views until you reach a threshold of supporters that numbers at least 10% of the total organization. Once you’ve reached that point, your change initiative should ”stick.”
Great Post, Dr. Lent. I’ve found that supporting dissenters in their dissent, inviting them to explore openly and encouraging assenters to take part in the discussion, creates a whole much greater than the parts.
Re your Tea Party thoughts, is that what recently happened? Congressman Boehner’s plan didn’t go through because Tea Partiers wouldn’t let it? (not claiming this as a fact, only something I heard).
In both cases, a good deed or act, even a self-serving one, can change people’s actions and win over a majority (see Combating Evil With Good for an example).
Regarding the Tea Party and other such entities, I think the challenge is that everyone wants to lead and nobody’s willing to follow. This lack of “healthy” leadership is touched on briefly in Raising the Debt Ceiling is Irrelevant if We Don’t Stop Spending More than We Earn. I’m planning a follow up post specifically on leadership in Politics2012 and hope to have that published in the next few weeks.
Again, thanks for provoking my thoughts.
Joseph
Joseph, Thank you for these comments…a couple of replies. First, I couldn’t agree more that supporting dissenters in their dissent to build the ability to engage them and others to create a larger, more wise discussion is an essential idea, if sometimes counter intuitive (or is that counter emotional). There are a number of ways to do this, some of these the techniques of various large group meeting structures. One is called sub-grouping in which you specifically create opportunities for the various sides to develop their ideas and be listened to by those with other views, without setting up some kind of debate structure. I have used this and other tools for more respectful dialogue to good success. They don’t work easily, however, in an atmosphere of parliamentary procedure and its attendant power politics.
I’d also like to comment on your question about Tea Party’s influence on speaker Boehner’s plan. This was not what I was specifically thinking about. My thoughts had much more to do with how the whole focus of attention has changed in the 8 months that the Tea Party has been in office and influenced/changed almost all of Congressional debate re. financing government. Last December, under the previous Congress, it was still possible to reach compromise on various tough fiscal policy decisions. No more.
I look forward to your upcoming post on more “healthy leadership.” I certainly believe that good leadership is essential. Of course leadership assumes followers, and it seems leaders will need at least 10% of Congress to be firmly behind them in their views to influence the thinking of Congress and be effective agents of change.