Well done, impressive work from both of you! What has been achieved over the past year truly deserves a big compliment.
The part about wide bridge events seems particularly interesting for the Ten Percent Club, I’ll mention this post.
The choice to focus in the coming period on improving onboarding after the introductory course feels very strong and sensible. It aligns well with what seems to be needed to maintain and deepen engagement.
Don’t rely on contagiousness. Social change does not always spread like a virus. A viral advertising campaign doesn’t enable new ideas to take hold. Simply attracting eyeballs will not suffice. Not only that, it can backfire when people hear about a change but notice adoption isn’t happening.
Protect the innovators. Non-adopters are often a countervailing influence. Innovations that face entrenched opposition from established norms can spread more effectively when early adopters have less exposure to the entire network.
Use the network periphery. Highly connected influencers can be a roadblock for social change. The key to initiating social change is to target the periphery. Stop looking for special people and instead look for special places.
Establish wide bridges. A narrow bridge typically consists of a single weak tie between groups. Narrow bridges have reach but lack redundancy, which is necessary to spread complex contagions.
Create relevance. When behaviour change requires social proof that a change will be helpful for a potential adopter, or if it requires emotional excitement or loyalty/solidarity, similarity among the sources of reinforcement will help. However, when change is based on legitimacy, i.e., believing that the behaviour is widely adopted, then the opposite is true: diversity among reinforcing sources of adoption is needed.
Use the snowball strategy. Clustering is key to triggering tipping points. Again, focus on special places, not special people. Incubator neighbourhoods allow a new behaviour to compete against an established norm.
Well done, impressive work from both of you! What has been achieved over the past year truly deserves a big compliment.
The part about wide bridge events seems particularly interesting for the Ten Percent Club, I’ll mention this post.
The choice to focus in the coming period on improving onboarding after the introductory course feels very strong and sensible. It aligns well with what seems to be needed to maintain and deepen engagement.
Thanks Marijn!!
Centola’s book ‘Change: how to make big things happen’ is really good.
He has six key tips:
Don’t rely on contagiousness. Social change does not always spread like a virus. A viral advertising campaign doesn’t enable new ideas to take hold. Simply attracting eyeballs will not suffice. Not only that, it can backfire when people hear about a change but notice adoption isn’t happening.
Protect the innovators. Non-adopters are often a countervailing influence. Innovations that face entrenched opposition from established norms can spread more effectively when early adopters have less exposure to the entire network.
Use the network periphery. Highly connected influencers can be a roadblock for social change. The key to initiating social change is to target the periphery. Stop looking for special people and instead look for special places.
Establish wide bridges. A narrow bridge typically consists of a single weak tie between groups. Narrow bridges have reach but lack redundancy, which is necessary to spread complex contagions.
Create relevance. When behaviour change requires social proof that a change will be helpful for a potential adopter, or if it requires emotional excitement or loyalty/solidarity, similarity among the sources of reinforcement will help. However, when change is based on legitimacy, i.e., believing that the behaviour is widely adopted, then the opposite is true: diversity among reinforcing sources of adoption is needed.
Use the snowball strategy. Clustering is key to triggering tipping points. Again, focus on special places, not special people. Incubator neighbourhoods allow a new behaviour to compete against an established norm.