When Chris McGoff walks into a meeting with college faculty members, he starts looking for the early adopters and the laggards.
Mr. McGoff, co-founder of the Clearing, a management-consultant company, says his decades of experience have taught him that the various ways in which people approach a new idea — or resist it — are consistent across all types of organizations, including academe. If all goes well, a small percentage of people will buy in to a proposed change or initiative right away, and a larger majority will follow them. Another small percentage will resist no matter what.
Building consensus requires finesse, strategy, and a little psychology.
The rubric Mr. McGoff cites derives from Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Consumers, first published in 1991 by Geoffrey A. Moore. A management classic, the book classifies customers asked to consider a new product into these categories:
The early adopters: About 13 percent of faculty members will examine a new idea carefully and ask tough questions, Mr. McGoff says: “They actually resist early.” But if a new idea seems sound to them, “they come to a conclusion — yea, verily, this is good — and they lock and load.” The commitment of the early adopters is critical to the acceptance of any new idea. If they reject it on its merits, success is all but impossible.
The early majority: This group, Mr. McGoff says, “has learned to watch the early adopters because over time the early adopters have chosen right.” About a third of the faculty will go along with a new idea because they trust their colleagues, he says.
The late majority: This group has one organizing principle: “I don’t want to be left alone,” according to Mr. McGoff. “When the early majority starts to lean in to the early adopters, the late majority doesn’t give it a lot of thought. They move with it.” This group accounts for another third of any group of constituents.
The laggards: About 16 percent of faculty members will also ask tough questions, but they’ll keep asking even after their questions have been answered, Mr. McGoff says. “They just have this way of being that sucks the air out of possibility,” he says. “Every time a laggard speaks, the entire group feels less confident.”
Administrators must win over the early adopters, hear out the laggards without letting them monopolize the discussion, and move to a vote, Mr. McGoff says. A minority will continue to protest, but “if we go into this with the assumption that everybody’s going to agree with everything, that is guaranteed to fail,” he says.
Lee Gardner writes about the management of colleges and universities, higher-education marketing, and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @_lee_g, or email him at lee.gardner@chronicle.com.
