Unit heads who have already adopted a change tell peers in similar positions what it cost, what went wrong, and what it delivered, which persuades more than any message from headquarters.
An example
Forty of a specialty retailer's three hundred stores had moved to demand-based staff scheduling, and the remaining district managers were refusing to set dates for their own launches. The head of store operations had sent three memos with the payroll savings. For the quarterly district managers' meeting she cut her own slot to ten minutes and gave forty-five to three district managers from the first wave, one of whom had fought the change. She asked them to cover what it cost and what had gone wrong as well as the results. The former skeptic told the room that his first month was a mess, that two store managers had quit, and that his weekend coverage was now the best in the region. The questions that followed were about training dates. By the end of the month, twenty-two districts had scheduled launches.
Why it works
Peers make the change look better because their account comes from people in the same job under the same pressures, and an admission of what went wrong makes the rest believable. They also make adoption easier: listeners learn the practical path, and the risk of going first is gone. It depends on testifiers who are respected and honest, ideally one who was skeptical, a forum where peers can question them without headquarters filtering the answers, and results that are real.
The thinking behind it
Robert B. Cialdini Robert Cialdini's Influence (1984) describes social proof: when people are unsure what to do, they look to what others like them are doing, and the more people seem to be doing something, the more correct it looks. District managers hearing from peers in the same job are getting that signal from the most similar others available, which is why testimony from a fellow unit head outweighs any memo from headquarters, and why it loses force once it looks staged.
Everett M. Rogers Everett Rogers's Diffusion of Innovations (1962) finds that adoption spreads through a social system largely by interpersonal communication, and that opinion leaders, the people others turn to for views on an innovation, have outsized influence on whether it is taken up. Giving the meeting to district managers from the first wave, including a converted skeptic, moves the message from headquarters into that channel.
When it fits
Suited to a change already adopted somewhere comparable, facing an audience that distrusts headquarters and trusts its own. You need early adopters with real results who are willing to speak, a forum where peers already meet, and the restraint to let them talk. Before anyone has results, there is nothing to testify to.
How to use it well
Find the early adopters whose peers respect them, including one who resisted at first; that conversion is the strongest account you have.
Ask them to tell the whole story, the cost, the mistakes, and the result, and leave it unedited. Give them a forum their peers already attend, and cut your own airtime to make room. For part of the session, let the audience question them without you in the room. Afterward, connect interested peers with them directly. Thank the testifiers for their time and keep anything resembling a reward for speaking out of it, since any hint of payment discounts everything they said.
What it costs and where it backfires
Handing your message to people you do not control means they may say things you would not, including truths about the change that hurt. If a respected testifier later turns sour, the same channel carries that too. Testimony stays honest only while people speak freely: scripting it, putting only the most glowing voices on stage while hiding the failures, or rewarding people for endorsing turns it into a staged campaign, and the audience will learn that from the next person they call.
When it is used on you
Listen to the peers, then call one or two adopters the sponsor did not put on stage and ask them the same questions. Find out what support the testifiers received that you would not. Judge the change on conditions like yours, and say so if yours differ.