Follow
No matter what community volunteer effort or organization, whether local, national or worldwide in scope, there’s a fairly immutable rule of the way people will perceive your efforts:
25% of people will actively support the effort by volunteering, contributing financially and talking positively with their friends, coworkers and family about the work.
6o% of people will be neutral. They will neither support or detract from the effort. They will have a reasonably balanced opinion about the work.
15% of people will have a negative opinion of at least some aspect of the work. Sometimes they will actively detract from and disparage the work. A few may try to stop the work from moving forward.
It is generally unreasonable to think you will eliminate the bottom 15% or that you will motivate many of the 60% to actively support the work. You can keep up the morale of the 25%.
There are times the 15% can be vocal and discouraging. If we understand that they are a fairly constant presence no matter what the scope or type of work you are involved in we know that arguing with them or trying to win them over is counter-productive. We feed their desire for attention and support for their opinions by engaging with them.
Tell a positive story, own up to shortcomings or miss-steps bravely, seek continuous improvement without being reactive.
The rule of thumb I learned for introducing new ideas at work was based on thirds — a third will like it, a third won’t, and a third will be skeptical but come around.
This rule is probably more applicable to changes than on-going support. If you’re introducing the patrol system, I’d expect to see responses break down by thirds.
I’m mentally adding up the numbers and my numbers (for my Scout Troops) seem to be more like:
60% Support
30% Neutral
10% Negative/Cause Problems/Against
YMMV.
I think you are right Larry – if we look at a Scout Troop made up of self-selected volunteer members so one would expect a higher level of support and lower neutral and negative numbers. If you look at the whole community including those outside the Scout Troop you return to something like the 25-60-15 rule.
What’s important is these three cohorts exist in just about any kind of volunteer work. We can sometimes shift the percentages (with tremendous effort) but they will generally return to something like the 25-60-15 rule.
It’s kind of liberating when you know this (at least it has been for me) because you stop worrying about trying to change the negative folks, modify your approach to the neutral folks and focus on the positive folks.