Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Start spreading the news (Frank Sinatra)

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Seth Godin in his blog explains how to bridge the gap between early adopters and the larger group who want to get involved with something that’s proven, popular and effective. 

The early adopters ask, “is it new?”

The early majority ask, “did it work?” and perhaps, “what’s everyone else doing?”

Interestingly, my father was an early adopter - whatever was new in the electronic range was of interest to him. In contrast, I'm more inclined to be one of those who follows the early adopters. 

For instance, when CDs came out in the 1990s I was a hold out. Records were/are my big love but I eventually had to give in when vinyl became hard to get, as they'd been virtually replaced by CDs.  

Interesting to note, that I was not someone who got rid of my vinyl, or my CDs when the next thing - non tactile music files/ streaming services began busily replacing CDs.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I do my work for early adopters. OneSchool Global, as an organisation. loves change and loves to keep innovating. That makes work an exciting place to be.

If you're not willing to go along with that, you may feel some tension/a chasm between the 'is it new?' and 'did it work?' questions.

Whatever your preference, Seth says that if you delight the early adopters within an organisation, they spread the word. 

That is how the chasm is crossed–not with fancy ads or clever hype, but because the people who are engaged do the generous work of telling the others.

As always, it will be interesting to observe this process in action for the next set of organisational changes in 2021. 

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