SUCCEED WITH CHANGE & TRANSFORMATION

The Three Percent Rule – Your Secret Weapon For Success With Change

July 8th, 2020 | Succeed with Change & Transformation, #ThreePercentRule

Change – yes good luck with that…

We all know the tedious success rate of change projects – only 30% are implemented successfully. Relatively both discouraging and demotivating…
BUT! We’ve cracked the code. Top-down communication is so not just last year, but last decade!

The good news is that all you have to do is to focus the communication on 3% of your employees. However, it must be the right 3% … and so far, in the 12 years Innovisor has been around, no management has ever managed to guess it right. It is always far from “the usual suspects”.

But how do we find them then?

That’s where we come in. What we call the 3% rule is the result of an overhaul of all the data we have collected over 12 years. It turns out that no matter the size and type of business, it applies to everyone that the 3% real employees reach out and influence on average 85% of the other employees. Whereas the leaders for comparison only reach 45%. And no, then 5% would not reach 110%, the effect stagnates after 3%. But reaching up to 90% via just 3% is pretty amazing.

What we do to find the right 3% is pretty simple – we simply ask “the man on the floor”. Get simple and concrete questions, of a positive nature via survey. What is not as simple, is the analysis of the data we get into, but we have fortunately developed algorithms for this and have skilled analysts to take care of.

Why are the 3% so important?

There will always be some kind of informal group structure, where some are opinion makers, other problem crushers, mood spreaders, etc. These are the ones we have to include in the 3%.

We are social creatures by nature, which is also apparent in the workplace. As moral and social philosopher Eric Hoffer says: “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.”.

When the 3% are positive about a topic, they pull the perception of everyone else up, and when they are negative, the others pull down.

The 3% are, therefore, the employees of your organization that you cannot afford to fail to engage in your change process if you want to succeed. This is where change initiatives from the past are failing – we have started a dialogue with the wrong stakeholders. And last but not least, it is the dynamics we have to step in and take advantage of.

The conclusion

If you want to be successful with your change processes, it’s all about having “the man on the floor” all the way. But it’s not about asking ALL; It’s just about asking 3%. The right 3%.