One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is believing they need everyone on board before they can begin a transformation. They spend months making presentations and trying to convince every stakeholder in the organization. The result is often delay, frustration and lost momentum.
But that’s not how change actually spreads.
Research by social scientist Damon Centola shows that transformative ideas behave like complex contagions. Unlike a virus, which can spread through a single interaction, people adopt new behaviors when they receive reinforcement from multiple sources around them.
More importantly, Centola’s research suggests that change does not require unanimous support. In fact, once roughly 25% of a population adopts a new belief or behavior, this is the tipping point where the rest of the system begins to shift rapidly.
If you don’t need the whole organization to reach the tipping point, then you definitely don’t need the whole organization to get started.
Three Phases Of Change
You can think of your transformation journey in three phases.
- Ignite: The goal is to gain a foothold. Find people who already believe and work with them to create visible results.
- Cascade: Use the success stories to invite people beyond early adopters to participate. This is how momentum begins to build towards the tipping point.
- Embed: Only later do the new behaviors become the normal way of working. These can be embedded through institutional rules and practices.
Movements do not begin with unanimous agreement. They begin with a small group of committed believers who demonstrate that a different future is possible.
The job of a transformation leader is to kickstart this momentum.