Milkman: Highlighting majority peer adoption persuades organizational change laggards
Katy Milkman · Understanding the science of fresh starts (Katy Milkman, behavioral economist) | Masters of Scale · Jan 3, 2025 · at 25:54
Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman discusses persuasion and organizational change tactics on Masters of Scale.
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“So it turns out that if people are told, hey, the majority of my peers are doing thing X, it makes me much more excited to do it. So if you already have decent adoption, you're just trying to bring along sort of the last 40%, which, by the way, is often the case, like, just by being a decent leader and saying, we're making this change, maybe you get 60% of people to do it, but then you've got 40% who are really not bought in. But often one of the things that can persuade those laggards is to point out, look, 60%, the majority of your peers are already doing this thing. And that really changes behavior because no one wants to feel left out or missing the boat.”
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