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| The emotion and knowledge factors needed for people to protest, boycott, demonstrate, and create successful change |
| The table at left shows the results of my survey (2002) of New York City residents and what they consider as essential knowledge and organizational factors to mount a successful protest. What's useful is that the NYC results have been replicated in numerous other public opinion surveys I have conducted or analyzed of residents in other parts of the US and Canada. The results shows that getting news media attention, as well as ensuring unity among groups and individuals, is considered of primary importance-especially to those with protest experience. What's also interesting to note is the significant difference in how men and women feel about the importance of key organizational factors. For example, women place far higher importance on unity than men. |
From our Human Research & Development Laboratory
| The application to a corporate change process The above research related to successful public activism has parallels to a corporate change process. Instead of needing news media coverage, a corporate change process needs another form of communication-internal. But the characteristics of that communications should use the formula that makes news a successful communication medium. Key to an impactful news story is keeping the information emotional, simple, and personal. We deeply absorb and are stimulated by communication that touches us directly, has strong personal relevancy, has immediacy, and stimulates an emotion-often fear. That in turn creates a stimulus for action. Corporate change processes refer to "guiding coalitions" of people who lead change, supported by those at the top. That's also the secret to successful activism, with the specific factors of experience, communications excellence, strong leadership, and flexibility. What corporate change processes can learn here is the absolute necessity of effective communications, compromise and flexibility. In other words, it's perfectly okay to change horses in midstream if you're drowning! |
| Copyright: Dr. Eli Sopow for more information please contact orgdoc@telus.net |