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You don’t ever have to make your case.

You don’t have to beg, coerce or plead with people to join your movement.

You don’t need to host a massive event to announce the start of the transformation.

There is only one thing you need to do… createmomentum.

Invite the right people to your movement at the beginning. Then work with those people to create the gravity that will attract the rest of the organization.

Over time you will get to a tipping point where the momentum you have created makes organizational change inevitable.

Find Your Tribe

Forget about walking around the company with a PowerPoint deck trying to convince everyone. That’s a losing game.

Find your tribe and invite them to join you.

Everett Rodgers’ work on the Diffusion of Innovation shows that change starts with a small group of people (i.e. innovators and early adopters). These are the people who embrace new ideas without needing social proof. They make up around 16% of any organization, but they are your bridge to the rest of the company.

If you don’t find early adopters, it is difficult to create momentum for your initiative.

At the beginning, when you have zero evidence of traction, look for people who:

• Already believe that change is needed
• Have been actively looking for solutions
• Have tried to come up with their own solutions
• Are willing to invest time and resources to support you.

Early adopters who become champions have been the strategic heartbeat of every successful innovation and transformation program I have worked on.

Get Early Wins

Now that you have found your tribe, work with them to get early wins.

Getting early wins is the first step in creating momentum; and I am often surprised by how many transformation leaders ignore this fact.

Here is something you need to understand.

Change makes people nervous. People fear uncertainty. So your colleagues are not evaluating your idea on its merits. They are paying attention to who else in the company is supporting your idea or whether you have early successes.

They are looking for social proof before they are comfortable to get onboard.

Usually the positive results of our transformation will take time to show. But this should not be used as an excuse for not getting early wins.

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You can work with your early adopters to solve their most pressing problems using your process. You can also break up your transformation into small chunks of work that can produce early results for your champions. To be effective, your early wins should be:

• Visible: People can see the impact
• Valuable: It solves a real business problem
• Verifiable: You can measure success and quantify the impact

Getting early wins for your champions is a great way to further cement their buy-in. Those early successes help them justify their decision to join your movement. This will make them happy to stick with you for the long haul.

Tell Your Story

Those early wins are the starting motions of the flywheel of change. You have created momentum. You are on your way.

Now it’s time to share your story with the rest of the organization.

Don’t use facts and data. Use narrative to help people develop an emotional connection to your transformation.

Make your champions the centre of the story. Put the spotlight on them and not yourself. Have them tell the story of how you helped them succeed.

People connect with a story when they can see themselves in the narrative.

This is how you attract the next group of people to your movement.

Getting To The Tipping Point

Research by Damon Centola shows that change becomes inevitable when at least 25% of a group embraces a new idea.

That’s right—you don’t need to get to 51% of the group.

Once your early adopters generate enough traction, the early majority will start paying attention. These are the people who weren’t ready at first but are now intrigued by your success stories.

Map each of those stakeholders and make a plan to engage with them. This is the time to start explicitly asking for what you need for success. You may want them to:

• Endorse your initiative
• Advocate for it publicly
• Contribute financial resources
• Send their teams to work with you
• Have a conversation with a key function on your behalf

Your early adopters and champions can also help you with the conversations you are having with this next group of stakeholders.

The ultimate goal is to push your initiative to the point where more than 25% of the people in your company actively support your idea. When you get there, you will have created the momentum that will make change inevitable.

A Final Thought

Transformation is not about having good ideas and selling them to people.

Transformations succeed when they create momentum.

Finding your early adopters and getting early wins is the first turn of that flywheel.

Telling your stories and recruiting the early majority will get you to the tipping point.

Forbes