Page 122 - Make Work Great

Growing Your Crystal

Potential Additions
The use of the word candidate is no accident. In the same way that
you would screen candidates for a job, you should be screening oth-
ers for inclusion in your crystal. You’re not looking for just anyone;
you want to fi nd people with the inclination and ability to make the
changes you’re making. Be on the lookout for superstars!
As the infl uence of your broadcast begins to snowball, you may
fi nd yourself with more candidates than you expect. Ultimately, peo-
ple will come to you and essentially ask to be part of your crystal,
because they will be infl uenced by the network around them and see
the benefi t of joining (something we’ll discuss later in this chapter).
This may be diffi cult to believe early in the process, but consider the
math in Figure 5.2. Sooner or later, even the most resistant people
will be in the minority, and through the invisible forces of change
described in the Prologue, they’ll be pulled toward your new patterns
of behavior without even realizing it.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, while your crystal
is in its early growth stage, you’ll need to pay conscious attention to
your broadcast. Our defi nition of a successful addition is strict; it’s
far better to succeed with a few than to fail with many. So let’s con-
sider the obvious—and not-so-obvious—groups that might be early
candidates to receive your broadcast.

Broadcast to Your Organization
If you’re a manager, you probably already considered choosing your
fi rst member from among your direct reports. Now consider the ben-
efi ts of adding an entire group of employees to your crystal. Whether
you’re in a direct management role or a project or team leadership

role, you exert influence over the people in your charge. One of the
benefi ts of crystal building with these people is that you can incor-
porate the new norms for behavior into group settings as well as
individual ones, making your role-modeling more effi cient. Imagine
a portion of a team meeting in which each member presents his or
her summary outputs list. Or a column on your staff meeting agenda

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