Achieving Critical Mass - The Square Root Strategy Explained! #inspiredleadership #createamovement

I said, well, we need a critical mass of people. And the client asked back, well, how many is that? So critical mass, the definition of critical mass is the minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction. But we use that term all the time in organizational behavior and organizational change. We need critical mass of people. So I said that one time. And I think I've told you this story before, Paul, because I think you enjoyed it. I said, well, we need a critical mass of people. And the client asked back, well, how many is that? I mean, how many people do you need to have critical mass? I hip shot right there and then in that meeting, oh, it's the square root of the total number of end users. And they were like, OK. So in that moment, I was like— but they bought it. They were like— OK. And I said— and then I've honed that over time. It's like, so if you have 100 end users, you need 10 to be a part of the— you need 10 super users. You need 10 as a part of the project. OK, great. And later on I realized, but if you have 10 locations and there's 10 people in each location, You need square root of each of those locations. So you need 3 people from each location because you need them to be interacting with each other. You need the fissile material to do the nuclear reaction. So it's not just the total number of users you need the square root of. You need it where they can impact each other. This became a science experiment, right? They're like, this is great. This guy really knows what he's talking about. I'm like, and you know what? I think it actually kind of works.