In 1998, five kids met in a cafe in Belgrade. Still in their 20s, they were, to all outward appearances, nothing special. They weren’t rich, or powerful; they didn’t hold important positions or have access to significant resources. Nevertheless, that day, they conceived a plan to overthrow their country’s brutal Milošević regime.
The next day, six friends joined them and they became the 11 founders of the activist group Otpor. A year later, Otpor numbered a few hundred members and it seemed that Milošević would be the dictator for life. A year after that, Otpor had grown to 70,000 and the Bulldozer Revolution brought down the once-unshakable dictator.
That’s how change works: in phases. Every transformational idea starts out weak, flawed, and untested. It needs a quiet period to work out the kinks. Through trial and error, you see what works, begin to gain traction, and eventually have the opportunity to create lasting change. If you’re serious about change, you need to learn the phases of change and manage them wisely.
The Emergent Phase
Managers launching a new initiative often seek to start with a bang. They work to gain approval for a sizable budget as a sign of institutional commitment. They recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big “kick-off” meeting, and look to move fast, gain scale, and generate some quick wins. All of this is designed to create a sense of urgency and inevitability.
Yet this approach usually backfires. Every idea starts out weak and untested. You might think that you have a sound concept. You may have even seen it work before and achieve impressive results. But until the idea has gained traction in your current context, you don’t really know anything. You’re shooting in the dark.
That’s why in the emergent phase, you want to move deliberately. For example, in his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd began every initiative by briefing a group of collaborators he called the “Acolytes,” who would help hone and sharpen the ideas. Only once the ideas had been subjected to intense scrutiny would he move on to congressional staffers, elected officials, and the media.
The truth is that change is never top-down or bottom-up, but always moves side-to-side. You will find the entire spectrum—from strong supporters to committed opponents—at every level. That’s why you need to go to where the energy already is, not try to create and maintain it by yourself. Find people who are as enthusiastic and committed as you are.
That’s what was achieved in that cafe in Belgrade. They didn’t have a movement, resources, or anything more than the rough contours of a plan. But they had a core team that was committed to shared values and a shared purpose. That’s where every change effort needs to start.
The Engagement Phase
Once you have your core team in place, you’ll want to start mobilizing others who might be open to joining your effort. The tipping point for change in most contexts is only 10%–20% participation, so you don’t need to convince everyone at once. You want to attract, not try to overpower, scare, or shame people into bending to your will.
The first thing you want to do is to identify a Keystone Change, which has a clear and tangible goal, involves multiple stakeholders, and paves the way for future change. When we work with organizations, we always encourage the teams we work with to “make it smaller,” until their Keystone Change is laser focused on one process, one product, one office, or one . . . something.
Another key strategy is to design a Co-Optable Resource that others can use to achieve their own goals, but also further the change you’re trying to build. A good Co-Optable Resource must be both accessible—no mandates or incentives—and impactful, meaning that it needs to deliver practical value and be scalable.
For example, in a cloud transformation at Experian, the CIO didn’t simply mandate the shift, which he had full authority to do, but instead started with internal APIs, which don’t carry the same risks and wouldn’t encounter much resistance. That was the Keystone Change. Then he set up an “API Center of Resistance” to help product managers who wanted to build cloud-based products.
What’s key during the engagement phase is that you are working to empower rather than to persuade. By helping others to achieve things that they want to, you can build traction and set the conditions for genuine transformation.
The Victory Phase
Once you have shown that change can work with a successful keystone project and begun to attract a following, you will begin to gain traction. This is when you need to start planning for the victory phase, which is often the most dangerous phase, because that’s when you are most likely to encounter vicious opposition.
Once the opponents of change see that genuine is actually possible, that’s when the knives come out. They will see that genuine transformation is possible and will seek to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. That’s what you need to be prepared for, because it almost always happens.
The good news is that these efforts are usually desperate and clumsy. They often backfire. What’s key is to not take the bait and get sucked into a conflict, although that will be tempting. When someone viciously attacks something we believe passionately in and have worked hard for, it offends our dignity and we want to lash out.
What’s important to remember is that lasting change is always built on common ground. So you want to focus on shared values in how you communicate and how you design dilemmas. You will never convince everybody, nor do you need to, but you do need to create a sense of safety around change and show that you want to make it work for all who are affected by it.
Protect Your Ugly Baby
Pixar founder Ed Catmull once wrote that “early on, all of our movies suck.” The trick, he explained, is to go beyond the initial germ of an idea and put in the hard work it takes to get something to go “from suck to not-suck.” He called early ideas “ugly babies,” because they start out, “awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete.”
There’s something romantic about the early stages of an idea, but it’s important to remember that, much like Catmull’s ugly babies, your idea is never going to be as weak and vulnerable as those early days before you get a chance to work out the inevitable kinks. You need to be careful not to overexpose it or it may die an early death. You need to protect your ugly baby, not shove it out into the world and hope it can fend for itself.
You need to resist the urge to jump right in with a big launch. Change follows a predictable, nonlinear pattern often described as an S curve. It starts out slowly, because it’s unproven and flawed. Few will be able to see its potential and even fewer will be willing to devote their energy and resources to it.
Early on, you need to focus on a relatively small circle who can help your ugly baby grow. These should be people you know and trust, or at least have indicated some enthusiasm for the concept. If you feel the urge to persuade, you have the wrong people. As you gain traction, identify flaws, and make adjustments, your idea will grow stronger and you can accelerate.
Large-scale change cannot be rushed. It is not a communication problem and wordsmithing snappier slogans won’t get you very far. It is a collective action problem. People will only adopt it when they see others around them adopt it. That’s why you need to approach it carefully. Give it the respect it deserves, and it can work wonders for you.
