TL;DR
To drive change, only 25-30% of committed "change evangelists" are needed to shift the larger group’s behavior.
Persistent, purposeful narratives—“overstories”—can shape organizational culture and drive lasting change, both positively and negatively.
Effective leaders are also storytellers, curating narratives that inspire collective momentum and make change self-sustaining.
Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favourite storytellers, explores the powerful, often invisible forces behind social influence in his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders and the Rise of Social Engineering.
Gladwell examines how small groups and powerful narratives can drive large-scale societal and organizational change in this book. Leaders can apply the concepts of overstories and the tipping point percentages to navigate organizational change dynamics successfully.
One of the stories that caught my attention was the "name game" experiment.
The experiment was simple. A large group was split into pairs, shown only a picture of a man's face, and asked, "Tell the other person what you think this person's name is." The group then switched partners and did it again. Within a few rounds, the group agreed on the same name.
The tipping point experiment attempted to understand what percentage of the people had to forcibly refuse to conform to the name convention to get the group to change the name. The experiment plants would wait until later rounds and introduce a different name to disrupt the group's cohesion.
The tipping point is between 25-30%.
In a group of 100 people, it only takes 25 to shift the group consensus from one name to another simply by not conforming to the group's momentum with the first name.
When driving change inside an organization, having the right number of key individuals as change evangelists—trusted, influential employees who actively champion and communicate the new vision across teams—can dramatically increase your chances of success.
Once you recruit your tipping point team, what do they communicate? Your overstory.
Gladwell's definition of an "overstory" highlights the potency of narratives in steering collective behaviour, whether in social or organizational contexts.
Gladwell used the example of Purdue Pharma and its role in the opioid crisis as one very salient and timely example of the power of overstories. The family of drugs were marketed as non-addictive, targeted at states that had weaker regulatory frameworks and then the company blanketed the state with marketing and sales campaigns to saturate the market.
The combination of the story and targeted repetition is what made it successful.
The power of the overstory is that it becomes pervasive. The group adopts the message as its own and spreads it independently.
The power of the overstory was evident in the mythology of the culture at an organization I worked at. We told the story of our collective ability so many times that we believed it and created the culture we aspired to have. This narrative didn’t just boost morale; it translated into a strong, consistent work ethic and resilient camaraderie, qualities that attracted others
As we grew explosively, the core employees evangelized the culture and recruited new employees into the overstory. We were incredibly successful in spreading the positive attributes of the culture as the organization expanded. The combination of the story, the number of culture evangelists, and repetition made us successful.
Purdue Pharma’s manipulative campaign exemplifies a negative overstory; my experience shows that powerful, intentional narratives can drive positive cultural transformation.
Gladwell reminds us that as leaders, we’re more than strategists—we’re storytellers, shaping the beliefs that fuel collective momentum. By cultivating purposeful overstories and enlisting the right ‘tipping point’ allies, we don’t just adapt to change; we inspire it to resonate and endure.
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