This second article in the series to equip changemakers to make a better world, Elena Bondareva shows why transformation does not depend on education or even persuasion.
If you are committed to changing the world, you have probably heard that it depends on your ability to win hearts and minds.
Well, that’s a myth, and I am here to bust it.
Imagine if electricity required the buy-in of the candle-lit world that could not even imagine it? If Steve Jobs and Apple needed millions of people to want a single-button phone? If our collective fire safety depended on thousands of individual tradespeople consistently implementing an array of measures?
Instead, electrification swept the globe after key New York buildings lit up. The iPhone was so intuitive and mind-opening that we lined up for it. Fire safety measures are not only embedded into the building code but enforced by countless professionals.
That transformation did not depend on the understanding or care of the impacted people.
Let’s use a less universal example. In Australia, 11 per cent of average income is automatically funneled into retirement savings. Imagine if financial security at retirement depended on the awareness, motivation, expertise, and sustained action of each Australian. An example of that approach can be found in countries that leave this to individual decisions, such as the US where I now reside, and the results are not good.
When people received boxes of free light bulbs from their energy company, they put them in, experienced the benefits and – hear this – gave sophisticated reasons for “choosing” to switch.
If we do need people to care about wicked problems such as climate change, loss of biodiversity or modern slavery in order to solve them, then why are we so fixated on changing minds?
I see two major reasons. The first can be boiled down to ego. “They just don’t care” offers an excuse. If we accept that the nay-sayers don’t hold much power, we must get on with it. And there are many – including valid – reasons we would rather not.
The other is believing that changing minds is required for creating change – the fallacy this article aims to defang.
Changing minds is not only time consuming and expensive, but it often misdirects our effort and sabotages transformation.
In each of the examples I used, the behavior was altered first. The mindset change followed. Vain as humans are, we will retro-justify our actions!
This came into brilliant contrast in the study that followed the adoption of energy-efficient light bulbs across Australia. The traditional approach required that we educate, motivate, enable, etcetera millions of people to change their shopping patterns while paying a big premium. Instead,when people received boxes of free light bulbs from their energy company, they put them in, experienced the benefits and – hear this – gave sophisticated reasons for “choosing” to switch.
Once again, going after the change in behavior shored up what would have otherwise been a lengthy, expensive, and frustrating journey that sadly, offered no guarantees of success.
Changing minds is not only time consuming and expensive, but it often misdirects our effort and sabotages transformation.
From its inception, the Green Star building rating system has sought to reduce what we called operational uncertainty. It shored up targeted outcomes by focusing on inherent building attributes.
Ultimately, people all over the world benefit from a better built environment that depended neither on their understanding nor their motivation.
Interventions like Green Star made desired behavior inevitable thorough a dynamic I first saw in the Green Star Accredited Professional course deck that I delivered hundreds of times.
Do you remember the slide with the bell curve? It described the normal distribution of, well, almost anything. Applied to green building, the bell curve explained how Green Star would create transformation.
The few who always do the bare minimum would be on the far left while the top performers – the early adopters – would own the skinny top end. Green Star with all its brilliant marketing (kudos to you, Suzie Barnett) would make that end so attractive that the curve would become “top heavy.” In time, that would justify pulling the tail in. I got to make that argument often as the GBCA representative on regulatory task forces.
The sequence is key here because regulators never want to alienate too many parties. Demonstrating that the curve has shifted to the right makes for an irresistible argument for mandating the once-optional.
What is more important than the edges of the bell curve is its middle that does not care. Regardless of the issues that lights you up, that is where nearly everybody will forever remain.
Before you succumb to judgment (the absolute no-no of transformation), note that both you and I are in that middle on most issues worthy of our attention. While passionate about democracy and individual rights, I do not care how my iPhone works as long as it does. I would never read about an update or line up for a new model. And yet my choice and my cash are just as valuable.
Even the key decision-makers may not care about your cause. Their motivations are often different altogether – and that is okay
We cannot physiologically care for as many causes as demand us to act differently. Expecting otherwise is naive at best and arrogant at worst. Hey, if we did not put sensors and timers on lights, even the most fervent climate activists would at times leave lights on.
Given that our work of remaking the world for the better is cut out for us, it is humane, delightful, and super handy that whether people care or not is incidental to transformation.
The more audacious our vision, the more unrealistic it is to expect people to care about it the way we’ve been told they must.
Wherever we look, wholesale regenerative transformation bypasses the “hearts and minds” change and goes straight for behaviour. It makes the targeted behaviour inevitable and the undesirable behaviour – illegal.
As changemakers, we must focus on shifting the curve
Accept that even the key decision-makers may not care about your cause. Their motivations are often different altogether – and that is okay.
When “top end” redefines the possible, it also makes the “bottom end” unacceptable. The oblivious middle continues to bitch and moan that this “fad” will never catch on, all the while benefiting from the marked improvement that the shift has created.
There is at least one good reason we want broad buy-in, and that is accountability.
If informed people agree with us, we must be alright. You may discover (and I have) that the line between influence and manipulation is thin.
So, yes, there is greater pressure if you bypass broad buy-in. That’s a pressure this movement has withstood time and again through research, targeted consultation, and deliberate prototyping. Let’s do it again because we must, because we can, and because, why not?
How to plan and execute transformation that does not depend on changing minds
Think of a cause you are passionate about. Now, answer these questions, and let me know how you go. Your comments are how we keep this a dialogue.
- What behavior change is required for the outcome you seek?
- What would make that behavior inevitable?
- Who has the power to make that happen?
- What would convince them to make that behavior inevitable?
Whenever I try to imagine how much time, money, and goodwill we have wasted trying to get people to care, I get angry. And that is before I consider how many of us never dared – or backed off or gave up! Because we have given “buy-in” way, way too much power.
It is time to put nay-sayers where they belong: on the periphery of our critical path to success.
Let’s stop worrying whether people care and start making desired behavior inevitable In this column, we discussed how accelerate transformation by taking individual choice out of the equation. In the next column, I will discuss how to use choice to supercharge your changemaking efforts. For a full intended scope of this column, refer to its introductory installment.
