Get 3.5% to protest to change this

Daniele Catalanotto
Mar 3, 2022
A Service Design Principle about how to make change happen in big organizations

Creating change in organizations can feel overwhelming, challenging and sometimes even impossible!

In the book The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, the authors present a piece of research that can give us hope.

It seems that when about 3.5% of the population protests in a non-violent way, change happens!

So if you are in a big organization with thousand people, you “just” have to convince about 35 people to push the change!

Having such a number as a goal is a reassuring element. You can tell yourself:

“My goal is to recruit 3.5% of people, and there will be a big chance the change happens!”

You now know how many people you have to recruit. That feels much less overwhelming, even if it’s a big number. But you know the number. It’s so hard and demotivating when trying to make change happen, and you don’t see any results. You don’t know if there is value in continuing or not.


Alternate titles

I'm not sure yet about the title of this principle, here a few other ideas:
  1. Recruit 3.5% of the team to make change happen
  2. Convince 3.5% of the team to create change


Little side notes

  • This is the very first shitty draft for this new Service Design Principle.
  • Once adapted, even more, this principle will be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"
  • As always comments and feedbacks to improve this principle are welcome
  • If you have a personal story that goes in that direction it would also help if you share it 

2 comments

Patrick Marcelissen
May 16, 2022
I might me be wrong but, for me this one of the same as an other principle " recruit 3,5 %...."
Daniele Catalanotto
Jun 4, 2022
You are absolutely right. Lost track when I was writing 🤦‍♂️