Mortgage Broker is the magazine of the Canadian Mortgage Brokers Association and showcases the multi-billion dollar mortgage-broking industry to all levels of government, associated organizations and other interested individuals.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/407986
MortgageBroker mbabc.ca fall 2014 | 43 3) Decision: Employees take the information learned during the persuasion stage and begin to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the innovation or idea, before making a final decision. 4) Implementation: is is almost like the "trial run" of the concept. During this stage, the employees begin to use the innovation and decide on its usefulness and relevancy. Problems with implementation can lead to a desire for further research. 5) Confirmation: Once an innovation has been implemented for a period of time, employees begin to decide if the innovation should remain a part of the company and form the company's culture. During this stage individuals decide if the innovation works for themselves, as well as for the company as a whole. is is the point when employees and employers may decide to permanently adopt an innovation into the company's culture. is may appear to be a simple process but in reality how do we achieve the tipping point that signals the acceptance of ideas, concepts and innovations? Within every company and its market sector, there are a number of different categories of innovation adopters. ese categories follow an S curve on a graph when plotted over the course of several weeks, months or even years. One of the biggest errors I have seen in strategy implementation in the mortgage industry is the jump in the stages below. It is critical that your strategy follows the necessary stages of implementation to enable the greatest chance of success and critical mass adoption of your company. • Innovators (2.5%): ese are the people willing to take the risks needed to develop new concepts. Because of their willingness to take risks, they are also typically willing to adopt new concepts more easily. • Early Adopters (13.5%): ese employees/marketplaces are the ones that oen take on the leadership roles and are not afraid to express opinions. ey may be a bit more calculated in the adoption process though, and while they oen adopt new innovations fairly soon aer introduction, they are not nearly as quick to adopt as the innovators. • Early Majority (34%): e early majority refers to the group that requires some time following the introduction of an innovation before adoption can take place. ey rarely hold opinion-leadership positions. is group includes the majority of employees within a company or market. • Late Majority (34%): e late majority includes the more skeptical people. ese individuals wait to see how the innovation works among those that have already adopted it. If the innovation seems to work well, is cost effective and demonstrates measurable advantages, the late majority will then begin to adopt the new concept. ey are oen difficult to convince because they want to wait to make sure the new innovation is the right choice. ey may be afraid to make the wrong choice, or they simply want to ensure that the change is worth the time it takes to do so. • The laggards (16%): is is the group most resistant to innovation adoption. ey are perfectly happy maintaining the status quo and show an aversion to change. ese are the people that take on an attitude of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." Oen, with this group of people, innovation adoption becomes a forced concept rather than a choice. ey will adopt a process and concept only aer everyone else has implemented the change and there is no longer any choice. e diffusion of innovations concept can easily be used in every organization, and especially those that are striving to establish a new company culture. Understanding the stages of diffusion, as well as the categories of employees and how they relate to new concepts, is critical to creating exponential growth within your company. is can be as simple as identifying the employees who are most likely to adopt a new way of thinking first while making other employees feel comfortable with the innovation. e DOI model tells us that in order to hit critical mass, we have to reach a tipping point beyond the early adopters. e Innovators and the Early Adopters that will create the tipping point towards mass adoption of an idea and innovation. In conclusion, it is during the Early and Late Majority that the critical mass is created. In order to reach that tipping point you first have to focus on the Innovators and the Early Adopters within your company and marketplace. • Fred Sarkari has been speaking and consulting in the mortgage industry for more than a decade. He is a licensed psychotherapist with a research focus around individual and corporate behaviour patterns. www.FredSarkari.com innovation early influencers The words "early adopter" have become part of our lexicon – however, the term was first coined by Everett Rogers in 1962 in his ground-breaking book The Diffusion of Innovations. He categorized early adopters as the group of people who first embrace new concepts and products. His research is widely referenced in communications, the social sciences and technology adoption studies.