Several years ago I was working in schools as a district coach where part of my job was coaching teachers to implement a new behavior management approach. In this role, I noticed some teachers were eager to explore new ideas for supporting their students. But, others seemed ambivalent, indifferent, and even resistant to invite me into their classrooms.
My oldest daughter is 11 and frequently asks me when she is going to get her own phone or tablet. Her pleas generally start with some version of… “Why not, everyone else has one?” As of today, we remain at a stalemate. If anything, we’ve both become more entrenched in our positions about “the device”.
These two examples illustrate for me the behaviors or characteristics of laggards. Laggards are slow or resistant to adopt a new idea or product. We have lots of labels for laggards -- late adopters, lingerers, idlers, and slowpokes. Overall, laggards don’t get a lot of love. In fact, we often see them as obstructing changes we may want to make.
But, decades of social science research have shown the adoption of new ideas or behaviors occurs differently for each of us based upon personal or environmental factors such as socioeconomic status, peer group membership, cultural/religious beliefs, age, or levels of education.
The idea of adoption groups was first popularized by a researcher called Everett Rogers and later described by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Here’s a quick overview of what these groups look like on a bell curve.
Who are laggards?
Those of us scrambling to be first in line are innovators or early adopters, a relatively small group that is willing to try out the “new shiny thing” and let the rest of us know if it’s life-changing or useless. Most of us land in the middle of this bell-shaped curve. If you look at the right side of the cure you will find the laggards waiting, watching, and perhaps wondering what all the hype is about.
Laggards quietly hedge bets and mitigate the risks willingly taken by early adopters.
Laggards more often make decisions based on what was done previously rather than looking to the future.
Laggards act from more “traditional” values than most of us and more often are navigating precarious economic circumstances.
Laggards must be thoroughly convinced that an idea will benefit them before they will use it.
And…a laggard’s vigilance can be critical when the stakes are high or when something is “too good to be true” (laggards will likely spot it first).
So, why should we pay more attention to laggards?
In the longer term, getting your program or idea endorsed by a laggard may be a sign you are on to something big, beyond just another flash in the pan. Go back to the bell curve (above) and notice the chasm that separates ideas from reaching just a few people to a whole lot more people. For example, when my mom started talking about getting an Instagram account, I knew this chasm had been crossed by this app’s developers.
This idea rings also related to my daughter’s request for having her own digital device. But as I mulled over this decision, I found my laggard side was grounded in a deep-seated belief that my child’s social and cognitive development. Even though fending off pressure from my 11-year-old was a lonely and uncomfortable experience, I believed there were longer-term benefits to lagging behind others.
My experience with my daughter and finding only sparse research on this topic, convinced me we need to understand and learn more about the behaviors and mindsets of the laggards among us.
Get to know your inner laggard
1. Think like a laggard. That’s right, get in touch with your inner laggard. When was the last time you were reluctant to adopt an idea, routine, or change at work (or home)? Can you recall why you were skeptical or resistant, even if you were in the minority? Understanding your inner laggard could go a long way toward understanding others’ hesitancy, which we may not fully understand or appreciate. Laggards can often bring to light issues or concerns about a new program or approach that few have considered. Taking a laggard’s perspective may help us to reframe reluctance as reasonable or well-founded versus as an obstacle or a personal attack (e.g., “they aren’t team players”, “she doesn’t like me”).
2. Think local and be specific. For example, research on vaccine hesitancy has found “local vaccination cultures” can influence an individual’s beliefs or knowledge about the origin or potency of a disease (e.g., it’s airborne, it’s transmitted by contact with orange rinds, you can kill it with bleach). Even in smaller organizations, there are formal and informal channels people use to give and get information. Those leading changes need to be aware of the messages, stories, or misinformation circulating within their organizations. How are channels of communication helping or hindering a proposed change you are attempting to make? Is information being communicated in language and ways that are reaching those most hesitant or reluctant to adopt an innovation?
3. Think about social norms. What if we think about the concept of vaccination as a social norm that could drive wider vaccine acceptance? There is evidence showing that we are all highly influenced by social norms or peer pressure. Dr. Emily Brunson, a public health researcher observed about vaccination campaigns, “instead of trying to build trust in federal institutions, it’s going to that mom in a Somali community or that reverend or priest in that Southern baptist community that will make the most difference.” In short, people trust their peers and word of mouth still reigns supreme - especially for those on the fence.
4. Inviting laggards to the table. But, those of us leading change in organizations typically don’t recruit or start with input from laggards. It is far more common to surround ourselves with early adopters or change agents who are perceived as ready to spread our ideas or mission. The problem with this approach is that we consistently leave out a segment of people within our businesses or schools who can become saboteurs instead of strong allies.
As one example, as a coach, I found some teachers who initially were against having me in their classroom became fervent champions over time of the classroom approaches I was sharing. I suspect the teachers I had labeled “laggards” had most carefully vetted me and my ideas more than their peers – they were gatekeepers in disguise.
5. Let’s conduct research on laggards. We need to spend more time and energy on understanding laggards. How much do we understand about why others abandon programs, resist innovation, or appear to stand in the way of “progress” in our organizations? Not surprisingly, it’s hard to recruit laggards for research projects. They are generally not inclined to want to pilot a new program or product. Instead, early adopters, already favorable toward innovations are the ones we most often study. One critical step to better understand laggards is to be aware of a pro-innovation bias that often leads to seeing the upsides of innovations and discounting their potential costs. Another step is to fund and conduct more research that helps us understand why individuals, communities, or other groups of people adopt later than the rest of us or not at all.
Instead of forcing those at the end of the line to move or change their ways or beliefs, it’s time to better understand why they are there in the first place.