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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday, July 3, 2000 Volume II Number 27
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FOCUS - Tipping
Little things make a big difference.
When the creators of Sesame Street did their initial research, they were paddling upstream. Serious educators spurned the television set as a teaching tool. The prevailing wisdom in the late nineteen sixties was that television could not be used to educate children. The medium is passive. Children may experience moments of fascination. They may be entertained. They may even remain still for brief periods. But educated? No way.
Gerald Lesser, a Harvard psychologist, one of Sesame Street’s founders, disagreed.
In preparing the project, he followed the advice of his colleagues when he created the first five test episodes. They spent the summer of 1969 testing the programs with children from all over Philadelphia. Child psychologists unanimously advised the creators of this new children’s program to carefully separate the fantasy elements of the show from the “reality” segments. Puppets, animations and cartoon scenes were shot without the presence of humans. If there were adults or children in the scene, the puppets and fantasy creatures were absent. This isolation of “fantasy” from “reality” was based on the consensus of the professionals, who agreed that children have difficulty discerning between the two. They will get confused if you mix them together, they said.
But Lesser found that the psychologists were wrong. In the testing, along with his co-creator Edward Palmer, the study found that the children were attentive to the fantasy segments, and distracted during the “reality,” or didactic scenes. It was then that he decided to cast his professional fate to the wind and violate the clear mandate of conventional wisdom. Lesser and Palmer decided to mix fantasy and reality.
They re-shot the five test episodes.
This time, they created a Philadelphia street scene where earnest
adults, eager children, and fantasy characters would mingle together.
Colorful letters and numbers would be overlaid on the screen.
Jim Hensen went back to his puppeteers, and challenged them to create
life-sized puppets. They created
new characters: Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and Snuffalupagos.
More testing confirmed Lesser’s hunch.
The children not only paid attention, they interacted with the
characters. They retained
information from the educational sequences.
In other words, they were learning.
And the rest is history.
Sesame Street became a staple for millions of eager children around the world.
It was a minor programming change that had major results.
Author Malcolm Gladwell calls this moment “The Tipping Point.” Sesame Street “tipped” from a television experiment to a television phenomena.
* * * * * * * *
It was a wonderful garden park in Port Townsend, Washington: the summer of 1991. The playground overlooked the Pudget Sound from a wooded bluff, through the oaks and elms and a manicured rose garden. Down the path then over the walking bridge, a swing set and a merry-go-round waited for the children.
When our kids used to say, “Daddy, push me,” they weren’t thinking easy. They liked going to the limit. The faster, the higher, the better. Right up to the edge. Over Mom’s protests. “More, Daddy! More!” So I did.
The merry-go-round is one of those heavy, circular steel platforms with metal pipe rails converging at the center. The center post is set at a slight angle so that as the platform spins, a rider on the edge, grasping the rail, rises then falls, up and down while spinning around, breeze blowing through the hair. Bearings virtually eliminate friction… so once the momentum is established it just keeps on going and going.
I’ve often wondered, where are these low tech, heavy-duty merry-go-round platforms made? Must be a consortium of muscled dads – a steel worker, a welder, a pipe fitter and a bearings man – a combination of fire and hammer and wrench and heavy grease. You know, the guys who build ships and bridges and skyscrapers and truck frames and tractors and cranes – all get together on the weekend to do something fun for the kids.
Our boy and one of the girls jumps on the platform and says, push Daddy, push. So I start, pulling on the pipe frame to get the heavy platform spinning. Then I grab the next and pulled again, this time harder. The kids giggle. “Faster, Dad!” So I pull again, and again. Each time, they feel the acceleration. It’s a matter of timing. Concentration. You watch the rails pass, and at the proper moment stretch and reach grab one and pull it through. As the pace quickens, each push shortens. But with focus and timing, the acceleration continues. Each slap against the pipe sends a shock wave through the steel, echoing like a movie simulation of thunder. The tempo picks up.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. “Faster daddy!”
The heavy pipes now pass close. Just under my arms. Like a paddlewheel. I crouch over, pulling and pushing. And it sneaks up on me. I realize, too late. I’m loosing my balance. I’m slowly falling forward. Into the spinning steel rails.
It was a tipping point. Literally.
I pass the point of no return. I have nowhere to go to catch my teetering fall.
Boom!
The merry-go-round pipe frame smacks my shoulder, and lifts my body airborne onto the lawn. I roll several times to a stop – the wind knocked out of my lungs. The merry-go-round uses me as a punching bag, and I am choking, dramatically sucking for air.
Carolyn, fearing she had been widowed at a Puget Sound playground, comes running to my side. The children, still spinning, cling to the turning frame whose momentum was barely affected by the blow and screamed, “Is daddy OK?”
It is a moment of sheer panic. But as I roll in the grass, checking bones for fractures, regaining some semblance of consciousness, I begin drawing air again into my hurting lungs… and realize that though I’d been struck like a baseball on a home-run pitch I survived, body bruised, but intact. I will live to see another day.
I will never forget the blow. But more, I will never forget the sheer terror of passing over that great divide… at one moment, in control. In the next, helplessly falling toward certain disaster.
The tipping point.
* * * * * * * * * *
The concept of the tipping point came out of research into tragedy.
Researchers who studied epidemics coined the phrase. They concluded that, contrary to common thought, there comes a point in the spread of disease when the sheer numbers of infected people multiplies geometrically. Prior to the formal study, it was believed that illnesses spread in a generally uniform fashion. But this is not the case. Whether it is a common flu virus, or the measles or HIV, as a disease moves through a population there comes a moment of critical mass. Once the virus crosses over, the chart graphing infections takes a radical turn skyward. We call it an epidemic.
The tipping point.
If the disease can be short circuited before it hits this critical mass, the devastating effect of the disease is radically reduced.
Real estate people picked up the term in the late nineteen fifties and sixties. Civil rights laws and political sensitivities have changed since then, making the discussion uncomfortable for some. But as population expanded, and cities experienced ethnic shifts in neighborhoods and large numbers of residents moved to outlying suburbs, there was a phenomena which came to be known as “white flight.”
When non-white people began to purchase homes in traditionally white neighborhoods, even long time residents would feel threatened. Some would move out. But when a certain number of new non-whites moved in, observers could predict the “critical mass,” whites would put up “For Sale” signs in large numbers – the mass exodus came to be known as white flight.
The tipping point.
* * * * * * * * * *
Now, the phrase is used in marketing.
What is the cause of a radical increase in market share? How does one product not only out-sell its competition, but bury it? How is it that one movie becomes a must see for the masses while another, perhaps even better film, flounders in box office indifference? Or how is it that one book, like a Jonathan Living Seagull or Bridges Over Madison County or One Minute Manager, while mediocre from a literary viewpoint, become a runaway best seller? What makes for a fashion fad? A blockbuster movie? Or a hit song?
Marketing experts point to a critical convergence of mass enthusiasm, generally driven by word-of-mouth promotion. One person telling another. It’s the element of cool. And when the trend hits critical mass – the growth explodes.
The tipping point.
Malcolm Gladwell advises people to borrow the research of epidemics, and think about how it is that people will become infected with the need for your product or service. To think about what will cause people to want to tell their friends. To position yourself so that you will be the most likely candidate to get the business.
You want that kind of virus to spread into an epidemic.
In our business, we are actively looking for ways to infect the right kind of people with the need for our products and services.
In our church, we are actively looking for ways to infect people with a conscious need to know God, to connect with His people and to serve Him in our community.
In the first case, we want an epidemic of business growth. In the second, we want an epidemic of spiritual growth.
* * * * * * * * *
The tipping point is the point at which the balance of the scale is tipped. In can be tipped in one of two ways. One bad. The other good.
It can be tipped in the direction of tragedy and loss. Or it can be tipped in the direction of prosperity and growth.
Little things make a big difference. Ask the makers of Sesame Street.
You’ll be faced with both today. This week. As a leader, you’ll find yourself hovering over the flying steel rails of sure injury, trying to keep the momentum alive without falling over and doing some serious damage. Keep your balance.
You’ll also be in a position to encourage growth. To enhance your position in the marketplace. To serve your customers/students/patients/clients well. To implement the kind of ideas that lead to broader exposure and greater appeal.
On this Monday morning, you don’t need an explosion. You just need it to tip.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000
The Tipping Point by Maclcolm Gladwell (Little and Brown, 2000)
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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