Over a year or more, an idea the company once treated as unthinkable moves to discussable and then to reasonable, as the range of what serious people inside will talk about widens.
An example
At a family-owned industrial-parts distributor, selling directly to end customers online had been off the table for decades, on the founder's view that it would betray the contractors who bought through the branches. The head of digital sales thought the company would lose a generation of buyers if it never tried. She did not propose it. Over eighteen months she brought in a supplier's data on direct-to-customer growth in adjacent categories, invited executives from two peer distributors to speak at the leadership offsite, and commissioned a customer panel run by an outside firm. A branch manager who had set up a small web storefront for repeat orders presented his results at a quarterly meeting. By the second year the executive team was debating how to sell direct without hurting contractors. When the proposal reached the agenda, it was one of three options, and nobody called it unthinkable.
Why it works
As the idea moves from unthinkable to discussable to one of several options, endorsing it looks easier, because nobody has to defend themselves against a charge of recklessness. Defending the status quo looks worse, as old thinking, and costlier, because holdouts must argue from outside the new boundaries of serious discussion. It calls for a long horizon, often one to three years, influence over which voices and comparisons enter internal discussion, the absence of anyone who can say the idea was unthinkable two years ago, and backers who do not push for the endpoint early.
The thinking behind it
Cass R. Sunstein Sunstein's Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation (1999) describes a self-reinforcing process in which a belief gains plausibility the more it is repeated in public discussion, partly because people adjust what they say to keep social acceptance. Each piece of peer data, outside speaker, and branch experiment makes direct selling more sayable, and each time it is said it gains plausibility. The clean form feeds the cascade only with true evidence.
Solomon E. Asch Asch's Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments (1951) found that conformity to a majority fell sharply once one other person broke with it. Inside a company, the first respected insider who treats an idea as worth discussing plays that role for everyone who privately agreed. That is why a branch manager presenting his storefront results moved the discussion further than the sponsor could alone.
When it fits
Worth the effort for an idea you believe will matter years from now, which the company cannot yet discuss without the speaker losing standing. You need patience measured in years, access to the forums where internal opinion forms, credible outside evidence, and a willingness to let others take credit for the shift.
How to use it well
Widen the conversation before you propose anything, and expect that to take a year or more. Your early job is to make the idea safe to discuss, and the argument for it often comes later, from someone else. Then wait. Pushing too fast makes the movement visible as a campaign, and the idea gets filed back where it started.
- Bring true outside evidence into internal forums: peer results, customer data, supplier views, credible outside speakers.
- Encourage small, real experiments inside the company, and give their owners a platform.
- Let respected insiders voice the idea first, since their standing moves the boundary further than yours.
- When asked your own view, give it plainly.
What it costs and where it backfires
Years go into it, and you give up most of the credit when the shift happens. A respected figure who names the effort as a campaign can stall it. Shut out voices that argue the other way, dress commissioned work up as independent, or deny your view to someone who asks, and you have moved from widening the conversation to rigging it.
When it is used on you
Keep dated records of where discussion stood before, so that when a once-unthinkable idea arrives on an agenda with no one marking the change, you can ask what has materially changed. Someone with standing can then say that this was considered unthinkable two years ago. Then judge it on the new evidence, if there is any.