Building core teams

Amanda Fenton provides a very useful reference that helps underscore the reasons why core teams are important. It turns out that having 10%of a population deeply committed to an idea will significantly contribute to that idea being widely adopted by the other 90%.

I don’t know about the veracity of this claim in every context but it does point to the need to abandon the idea that everyone needs to be on board to make things happen. For steel real years I have been interested in helping groups create a topography of engagement whereby a core the holds a central circle of shared purpose and shared work and concentric circles are organized around this work. The team percent rule helps me to think about the mechanics if how invitation can spread and how container building scales.

Makes me think for example that if you engaged in transforming a large traditional conference to something radically participatory you need at least ten peer met of the participants to be committed to that new form. For a conference of 600 that means reaching 60 people. This means a core team of 10 needs to each find five other people to really commit to the idea. From there invitation can go broader and less deep. But without those 60 on the next ring out you run the risk of having 10 committed individuals trying to convince hundreds to take a leap.