Imaginization
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Provocative Ideas:
The 15% Concept

The 15% Principle: Research Support

Support for the 15% principle is widespread. For example,

Research conducted by Edwards Deming and others in the quality movement has shown that a person's ability to control the detailed results of his or her work is limited to the 15% sphere of direct influence. He or she can only act effectively on problems falling within this domain. [2]

This research has been primarily conducted on the activities of lower level employees, using statistical process control techniques to establish the validity of the 15% principle. The breakthrough insight from our research is that managers themselves are subject to the 15% rule.

Even the most senior executives find themselves hemmed in by forces over which they have no control, such as stock analysts reports, fluctuations in exchange rates, a difficult board, or a highly politicized management team. Similarly, lower level managers are constrained by the structures, systems, and cultural context within which they work. Like their staff, management's basic challenge is to lever change through their spheres of limited influence.

Social psychologist Karl Weick and others have shown that people often define problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them. [3]

Changing the scale of the way problems are perceived can reduce resistance, preserve gains, and encourage innovation. People can better realize major changes when the challenges are transformed into opportunities for 15% "small wins" that can gather momentum through visible results.

In the field of corporate strategy, Henry Mintzberg, James Brian Quinn, and Charles Lindblom have demonstrated how the pattern of successful change is often "emergent" and "incremental" rather than comprehensive and planned. [4]

It builds on resonant opportunities arising within the system as a whole, especially the experience gained from pilot projects and safe experiments that address issues of corporate-wide importance.

The art of using small changes to create large effects has also been demonstrated as a successful strategy for political change. For example, Saul Alinsky and others have demonstrated the power of finding high leverage initiatives that can snowball in their effects as a key ingredient for successful transformation. [5]

New theories of chaos and self-organization also point to the role played by small, emergent changes in prompting systemic transformation. Butterflies in China can "stimulate" hurricanes in the gulf of Mexico, just like the proverbial straw can "break a camel's back."

Darwin's theory of evolution also presents a powerful illustration of how quantum change can occur incrementally through random variations that lend competitive advantage.

We capture the unifying idea in all the above examples through the notion of acting within a 15% sphere of influence. The number is not as important as the image of how significant changes within one's grasp can unfold to produce large effects. The implications for leadership and management are enormous, encouraging executives to recognize that while they may be formally responsible for creating systemic "100% changes," their best strategy may be to do so in a 15% manner.

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