The Power of Idea Acceptance

For us in change management consultancy, one of the big challenges is to overcome "resistance to change", or get people to accept and implement new ideas.  There are thousands of books written on the subject, usually referred to as change management.

In the book "Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders" by Rajeev Peshawaria, the author discusses an interesting idea about how to increase effectiveness when leading the implementation of new ideas in organizations.  He suggests that effectiveness follows the following equation:

E = Q x A

Where E if Effectiveness, Q is Quality and A is Acceptance.   

Sometimes, we only focus on the "acceptance" part of the equation, and fail to question if the quality of the idea was good enough to begin with.   If the quality of the idea increases, then  the acceptance itself may also increase, so the quality component is the leverage point to increase effectiveness.

There is a review by Matt May of the book that you can read here.