How To Funnel Change By Emulating Epidemic Disease Key Traits: New Ideas Are Like Germs

"Change is frustrating for everyone in organizations. Leaders know that often survival depends on change. Most employees however see change only as a threat and resist change. Change is seen by most as involving great effort and that in the end it often fails. But there is another way of looking at change. What if change was easy and required little effort but needed instead clever use of process? What if we saw change in the same way that disease happens. What if new ideas were like germs and the process of change was like an epidemic? How could you set change on motion by using this concept?"

Yes, I am back at it: change and how to facilitate its becoming. Robert Paterson does an excellent job at synthesizing and bringing together the key essential ideas of Everett Rogers - the father of Diffusion Theory and of his popular disciple Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame.

• "Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.


• The world does not accord with our intuition. Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.


• What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.


• Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push; just in the right place; it can be tipped."