Xxv) Importance Of Grassroot Support

In both social and organisational change, there is a misunderstanding around the importance of grassroots support.

"...we have a tendency to see these huge problems in society and to think that the only way to solve them is with some heavy-handed, top-down, one-size-fits-all approach......people think some big institution is going to solve the problems, whether it's big philanthropy, big government, big what-have-you. but everywhere what we have learned has shown that it's not actually how you solve these big problems. Social progress all happens one individual at a time. It's one social entrepreneur building community, finding a better way to do something and then having that catch fire and gain momentum and become a national wide movement..."
Brian Hooks as quoted by James Hohmann 2019

Like in communities, in organisations you need to have grassroots support, ie staff at lower levels supporting the change - in addition to senior management - for change to be effective.