I have worked in administration type work my whole life. I learned a long time ago that there is a definite split in attitudes and thoughts.
I call it the 25% 25% 50% Theory. In my line of work, which is working with people and people issues, it almost is the same all the time no matter what the issue.
25% of any group will agree with you and back you. 25% will total disagree with you and fight you every step of the way. And, 50% really don't care one way or the other and will usually not get involved.
It works every time. The hard part is that the members of the groups change depending on the topic or issue. I guess the best we can do is to try to figure out what group we are in on any given issue and, if we are in the fighting 25%, try really hard not to get too radical.
Does this help? Has anyone heard of this before? It really does help me in my work as I can relate to conversation from different folks and know where they are coming from. When I run across an individual who is speaking very passionately about something, I know that they are either in one of the 25% groups or the other, and I try harder to listen and understand their point of view.
Fascinating. I've always heard of the 20-80% rule. That in any organization (work, church, class, etc.) 20% will do 80% of the work. 20% will make 80% of the sales, etc. That seems to be true as well. I'm gong to try out your theory. Thanks for sharing!
I use it a lot to keep my cool when dealing with company rules that related to safety and security; the real "pain in the neck" rules that people don't like. Like wearing ID cards and the like. some are so supportive, some are so awful, but I have to deal cordially with each.
Get a bunch of scientists together, and you can count on 70% of them disagreeing with you and fighting you every inch of the way, 20% spending all their time figuring out how to get credit for what you've done, and the remaining 10% will be so busying emailing each other to decide when and where to meet for lunch that they haven't got a clue what's going on.
Speaking as a person who managed offices, was an executive (and legal) secretary, etc., etc., etc. in addition to learning how to program Access Databases (from scratch) and mine databases, I'd like to point out that those of us in admin needed to ORGANIZE that 10% who wanted to go to lunch and slap down the 20% that kept stealing OUR work and calling it their own. Actually for secretaries it is a lot more than 20% that go around stealing your work.
As a manager I was constantly letting people know which one of my "guys" was actually responsible for whatever they were giving me credit for. If they did well it reflected well on me. And I hated the folks that stole credit for my work so much I wasn't going to be one of them!