We’ve been getting a lot of changes lately, some good, some bad, some I feel complete apathy about. This is a big shift from Pres. Monson’s time in the top job as he was in poor health for the last several years so seemingly nothing changed in the last few years. Now that we have someone in a position to make changes who is both physically vigorous and mentally alert, whatever innovations he wants to do are going to happen. It’s an interesting time to be a member of the Church, and there’s been plenty to talk about in the bloggernacle and at church as a result.
Proponents of these changes are often swept up in the idea that this represents a final rush toward the Second Coming, that we are clearly in a “hastening” to prepare for the Savior’s return. Of course, one facet of Christianity is that every generation of Christian (including in Paul’s day) has been convinced that the Second Coming was imminent. Don’t hold your breath, or as it says in Matthew 24: 36: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”
Critics of these changes seem to say one or more of the following things:
- Oddball. These are “hobby horses” of Pres Nelson’s being elevated to the rank of revelation by him now that he’s in power.
- Trivial. These changes, even if positive, are minor.
- Obvious. If the changes are viewed positively, the changes are common sense and overdue.
- Off Point. Higher priority issues aren’t being addressed.
- Contradictory. Some favored changes throw prior leaders under the bus.
Ultimately, that’s the problem with change. If you make a change that’s an obvious win, that everybody’s been clamoring for, well, then it’s not prophetic because it’s too easy. If you don’t make a change someone wants, they will think your priorities are wrong. Do nothing and they criticize you for your inaction. Do things, and they’ll criticize you for a zillion facets of the little things. Nobody can win when making changes. Ultimately, you have to be thick-skinned enough not to care what your critics say or you’ll never get anything done. Hopefully, you’re also smart enough not to listen to your fan club either, because they are going to laud your every move, even the ideas that are stinkers.
My favorite part of the two-hour block change was when E. Cook said the 3-hour block was difficult for some church members and then proceeded to list every conceivable demographic of church member. It was clearly difficult for all of us. I haven’t heard a lot of back talk about that shift, except perhaps the criticism that more “home church” means more unpaid and invisible work for women, and more assumption that when things fail, it’s the fault of women. I’m not saying that’s not true, but I refuse to accept unearned guilt. I also refuse to accept some earned guilt. It slows a person down. I’m busy.
Church members may be good little soldiers, but they are not renown in our contemporary church for their progressive views. Changes can be difficult for some to handle, some changes can be more difficult, and some people find change in general more difficult. People can be grouped into five categories in terms of how they embrace change:
- Innovators (2.5%). Their motto might be “if it ain’t broke, break it.” They love to take risks and experiment with change. They don’t mind doing something the rest of the group thinks is crazy.
- Early Adopters (13.5%). They are the pioneers, trying new ideas to sell them to the group. Of all these groups, they are the biggest though influencers.
- Early Majority (34%). These folks tend to adopt ideas once sold by the early adopters. They can sense a new trend just ahead of the average and jump on board.
- Late Majority (34%). These individuals tend to be skeptical of change, waiting to see how the early majority works out the bugs. They might hang back and be critical or simply have a “wait and see” attitude.
- Laggards (16%). These are the traditionalists, the last to adopt innovations. They are not opinion leaders and have very little influence on others in a group. They are fixated on the past and may be rendered obsolete by their unwillingness to join everyone else. Often they stay firmly planted on their porch, shaking their canes as the world surges past.
You might think that innovators are all young people while laggards are older, but that is not accurate. Studies show that while young innovators may be willing to take risks, they often lack the insight and experience to innovate in the smart ways that catch on. The optimal age for innovating appears to be in one’s 40s and 50s, when a person has enough life experience to prioritize, and enough social skill and capital to make things happen. After that age, particularly in our digital age, innovating can become more difficult due to the pace of change and technological advancements.
These groups are useful to marketers who want to entice people to buy or “adopt” specific products, apps or forums. But anyone seeking to sell change to others should be well versed in how these social groups function in the change process. This model is most useful when the types of change being “sold” are technology or products, which are assumed to be building on previous technologies. But change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Some ideas are better than others. People may be quick to adopt some changes and downright hostile toward other changes. The groupings assume the changes are inevitable, not that they are equal options in a marketplace of ideas.
Let’s look at a few different changes we’ve talked about in the bloggernacle.
- Example A: Switching to digital scriptures. This one is the most on-point example since it is a technological change. Early adopters starting using smart phones instead of paper scriptures and quit carrying scriptures with them before it was the norm. The late majority seemingly waited for church leaders to signal that it was OK to switch to tablets instead of paper scriptures. Even now, though, seminary teachers (beleaguered by incessant texting of class members, no doubt) and some laggards insist that paper scriptures are better or more spiritual somehow. Pres. Packer insisted fairly early on that all the apostles get and use an iPad for their scriptures as they are more portable for their travel schedules. This is an example of someone high up being in at least the early majority category.
- Example B: Embracing feminism and improving leadership among women. There are some bishops who have long considered the RS president to be on nearly equal footing in running the ward. These might be early adopters. There are others who demand fealty to priesthood hierarchy, shutting off women from decision making. We have church leaders at the top levels stating that they want more women to speak up, then qualifying “not too much.” Pres. Nelson’s first General Conference also cut women speakers to almost none and focused on promoting limited gender roles for women in the Women’s Session. There are mixed messages. This is an example of top leaders being in the laggard category, significantly behind most church members who are not in their same age cohort. However, among their own age cohort, there’s some reason to believe the apostles are ahead of the majority of octogenarians and older. That’s just not the majority of church members.
- Example C: Moving to a 3 hour block. This was a quick change as soon as Pres. Nelson took the reins, but it was one long desired by the membership. It’s been a rumor since the mid-90s that it was going to happen. Given how long it’s been discussed, I can’t imagine anyone is still a laggard on this one.
What do you think?
- Where do you tend to fall in these groups?
- Does it differ based on what kind of change is being introduced?
- Where do you fall in adopting new technology? How early on did you switch to digital scriptures?
- Where do you see your fellow ward members falling in these groups? Has it differed in other wards you’ve been in?
- Where do you see church leaders in these categories? Are there areas where they appear to be innovators? Provide specifics in comments.
- Is it possible to introduce change without criticism? Is criticism part of working out the bugs in new ideas?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Great discussion, but it is maybe more applicable to for-profit corporations and businesses than not-for-profit (NFP) entities like governments, the military, churches, or school boards. For-profits can rather unashamedly acknowledge that product or organization changes have the ultimate goal of increasing revenue and profitability. That’s what for-profits do. With NFPs, the connection between particular changes and the mission of the NFP is sometimes murky, so it is easier for changes to serve particular interests or hidden agendas rather than be directly linked to the mission of the NFP. To get to the point: there are obviously hidden agendas and personal interests of particular leaders that influence LDS changes, when the changes that have little or nothing to do with “building the Kingdom of God” or whatever the ultimate mission of the Church is.
This gets to the difference between justification (how leaders try to justify the change to the membership or the users of the service or product) and the explanation (why leaders *really* made the change) for any given change. Example: the two-hour block. This is justified (sold to the membership) as promoting more gospel study in the home, a good thing, or lessening the time burden on the membership in general or some particular demographic like young families. But the real explanation very likely is to save money in certain areas of the Church where more units can be accommodated in a given LDS chapel, avoiding the cost of new buildings. The bigger the gap between justification and explanation, the more the credibility of the leadership suffers, at least among those who sense the difference. [They’ve been promoting gospel study in the home for decades. That has nothing to do with the actual explanation for why they just made the two-hour block change.]
In an organization that is un-transparent and there is a big gap between explanation (the real reasons) and justification (what they say), “Innovators” and “Early Adopters” aren’t those who are quick to start using a better product or service. They may very well be naive folks who believe and do anything they are told. “Laggards” might be people who resent being manipulated and show their unhappiness by refusing to follow the majority that unreflectively implements the requested change. I think we’ll see this with the Mormon name change.
In a now fallow thread people talked about whether the changes from President Nelson are prophetic or just personal hobby horses. At lds.org there is a video interview with him done after the Concepcion Chile temple dedication. His wife is quoted in the text accompanying the video:
“I have seen him changing in the last ten months,” said Sister Nelson. “It is as though he’s been unleashed. He’s free to finally do what he came to earth to do. … And also, he’s free to follow through with things he’s been concerned about but could never do. Now that he’s president of [the Church], he can do those things.”
It looks like Sister Nelson agrees with the personal hobby horse camp.
Dave B: You make some great points. Even in the business world, innovation can land with a wet thud when there is a lack of transparency (or perceived transparency). At one point in my last job, the “innovator” in our chain of command decreed that we were to have mandatory 30-min departmental meetings *every morning.* This was not just unnecessary for our particular department, it was a huge strain due to our competing schedules and locations. The reason given was the usual claptrap about “improving communcation” but our perception was that this innovator wanted to seize upon any improvements that happened and then take credit for them.
We did it for two weeks and then complained enough that we went back to a weekly meeting. Which is another thing about the church: as an institution, we are afraid to admit that something might not be working out right and that we’re scrapping it. As I commented elsewhere, there hasn’t been a word said about “First Sunday Councils” that have just vaporized along with all the other upcoming changes. I would have *more* faith in leadership, not less, if they were to say “Hey, it didn’t work out and the Lord wants us to try something new.” Only silence on that, though.
KLC: Hmm. Interesting quote. My brow is thoughtfully furrowed.
KLC that’s a step further than she went in their first tour. In London she said “It is quite an experience to send him off to work in the mornings. He returns home a little different. He becomes more and more of his true self every day. And why not. This is what he was foreordained to do.” (https://wheatandtares.org/2018/04/12/president-nelsons-global-ministry-tour-broadcast-for-the-uk-and-roi/)
Are we to take it that he had him self on a tight rein all the while he wasn’t able to implement the things he wanted?
I’m just puzzled why she thinks the changes he’s making are more important than developments in heart surgery…
Hedgehog, Maybe she doesn’t think that. Maybe she just doesn’t think through the implications of what she says See, e.g. “The Note Even Once Club”. Maybe she’s just not a blessing to the whole church. Maybe we should hear more women’s voices, but not hers.
“Not” not “Note” Sorry, #@*&% autocorrect and my impatience and lack of proof reading!
I’m assuming the percentages assigned to your five categories are for U.S. population as a whole and not Latter-day Saints. Since we tend to be ultraconservative and largely resistant to change, I’m guessing that the percentages would skew way to the right for Mormons on most issues. Lots of laggards. We tend to be 20 years behind most trends. But with the 2-hour block, I imagine there are about 99 percent who would consider themselves early-adopters. Pretty much a no-brainer, except for a few special cases.
I find I fall on different places in the bell curve but typically I’m in the early majority camp. For digital scriptures I was an early adopter, having used some form of searchable digital scriptures since the early/mid 1990s. I’m a laggard when it comes to calculators. I still have my Reverse Polish Notation HP-15C I bought in 1984 and never had a desire to buy a graphing calculator despite my kids teasing.
I bought one of the first I-Phones and had digital scriptures loaded on them. As a bishop’s counselor then, I spent my a lot of time in Deacon’s quorum and I used the digital scriptures there. One boy’s father took me aside one day and told me I was setting a bad example using the scriptures on the I-phone. His son just got an I-Pod and told his father he was going to use it for scriptures instead of bringing his paper copies, “Just like Brother C.” Dad was scandalized, but I placated this brother while his son was still in the quorum and just reverted to using my old quad there.A few years later this same brother was teaching the 15 year olds using his own I-Pad.
I do not see our church leaders as innovators in any way. There may be many factors that lead to this: they are all old and lifetime GAs groomed up in the years of service to support the way things are, and the belief and faith that the church has truth no the world and so they are more closed to changes that don’t come from the top. There are many factors…but I think we are way more slow to change and much more prone to beat the drum of “follow the prophet” and “obedience” and “don’t murmur.”
I don’t think change comes without criticism, even popular ones. I think our society with more social media and avenues to express ourselves, I think we are more critical than ever. So leaders do need a thick skin.
Change requires a vision and passion to push through the resistance. It is easier to keep things as they are, until the pain of staying where you are, the burning platform, is higher pain than change. But there is always pain and risk with change.
I think the church waits on the burning platform until they are forced to jump. I think they are visionary in terms of interpreting scripture and teaching spirituality and feel good lessons on kindness. I do not think they are visionary in organizational management. But maybe that is ok.
We may be living in a time of many changes in the church, but they are too few and too slow to change even still. There needs to be more.
“Where do you tend to fall in these groups?”
Anywhere depending on the item being considered. I tend to be an early adopter of technology. Religion, on the other hand, is a thing that really ought not to change much; God presumably is as old as the Universe, that means 13 billion years old, just how much change in a day, week or decade were you expecting?
“Does it differ based on what kind of change is being introduced?”
Indeed it does. I am a lot slower to adopt changes that I’m not convinced came from God, which means anything that seems capricious or faddish.
“Where do you fall in adopting new technology? How early on did you switch to digital scriptures?”
It varies. I adopted every pocket calculator that came along until I realized I was spending a lot of money and not really benefiting that much from it. The only reason I finally bought an iPad was to fly a drone, but I wasn’t an early adopter of drone; there’s a quality threshold where I decide technology has advanced enough to be useful to me. Anyway, once I had iPad I realized its usefulness as a gospel library; scriptures, magazines, even the hymn book!
Digital scripture are great for reference purposes but to just sit there and read scriptures I still prefer a paper book.
“Is it possible to introduce change without criticism? Is criticism part of working out the bugs in new ideas?”
Criticism is human nature. Change, no change; hardly matters. It isn’t even about working out bugs it is working out the hierarchy!
I intended to add a caution about digital scriptures: It can be changed in the blink of an eye and you might not notice the change. With paper scriptures it is not so easy for “Ministry of Truth” to alter history. Digital media has a terrible vulnerability to mischief commensurate with its incredible convenience. I carry in my pocket an entire library of books, magazines and resources.
“But the real explanation very likely is to save money in certain areas of the Church where more units can be accommodated in a given LDS chapel, avoiding the cost of new buildings.” I’m curious why you think that. Certainly, that will happen in some areas, but it seems like a leap to get to that as the main reason. The Church isn’t hurting for money. I haven’t heard any stories of the Church trying to stretch building use further than it has traditionally done. Do you have some other information that would indicate this is the case?
As for where I stand on the curve, I tend to be an early adopter for technology at church (to the point that I am constantly annoyed that my ward doesn’t use the tools available to through LDS Tools), and possibly between early adopter and early majority for non-doctrinal social changes (for example, I think that there’s no reason women shouldn’t serve in the Sunday School presidency, be involved in nearly every important council in the ward, serve as clerks and executive secretaries, full-time seminary teachers while children are still at home, serve as zone and district leaders on missions, or take part in any other leadership or administrative role that is not doctrinally connected to priesthood office. On actual, doctrinal issues, I don’t know where I am, but it’s somewhere to the right of the top of the curve. I think the family proclamation describes eternal truths, I don’t think women need to hold priesthood office to be equal with men, and I believe in the literal truth of the Book of Mormon (with some allowances for the idea that it is not a literal translation, and that some passages may represent the narrative equivalent of the original text, rather than a literal translation).
DSC quoted OP and wrote: “But the real explanation very likely is to save money in certain areas of the Church where more units can be accommodated in a given LDS chapel, avoiding the cost of new buildings.” I’m curious why you think that. Certainly, that will happen in some areas, but it seems like a leap to get to that as the main reason.
My thoughts: I agree with DSC as the money issue always plays a factor, I am not sure it would be the main reason outside of Utah or Arizona areas.
Didn’t they run a pilot program of 2 hour block for a while that proved to be successful? I think it was kept hush hush, but does anyone know if it turned out successful from pilots and everyone liked the idea?
Seems like they were just trying to manage the image of “doing less instead of doing more” at church that held them back…but eventually…they saw it was a good thing to reduce burdens on families.
I’m conflicted. On the one hand, these changes feel like policy, not revelation. I mean, sure, the Lord probably does want us to only be at church for two hours, but is that really “revelation”? Administrative changes don’t feel like “revelation”, although I’m more than happy for the Lord to direct things like that. Elder Bednard announcing a “snowstorm of revelation” (or whatever he said) feels a bit manipulative when the result is 2 hour church instead of 3 hours.
On the other hand, what revelation can we really expect? To be fair, the revelation in the scriptures occurred over hundreds of years, so what can we really expect from our church leaders? Inclusion of LGBTQI? A wider view of what God accepts? Women being ordained?
I’m also having a hard time imagining that saving money on buildings is behind this. I’m in a high density LDS area (Utah) and there are already 3 wards in most buildings. Typically the 3 hour block results in a single building having Sacrament Meeting starting at 9, 11, and 1 for it’s 3 wards. With the 2 hour block it will be 9, 10:30, and 12:00. I doubt the church would often try to squeeze another ward in at 1:30, but I guess we shall see. Outside of the Western US I think travel distance is what prevents most buildings from accommodating more than 1-2 units.
I couldn’t help but smile wondering if Elder Bednard served in a quorum somewhere with the oft-referenced Elder Packard. Perhaps in a church led by President Monsond or President Nelsond.
A new hobby of mine was occasionally reading trial reports on the treatments prescribed to my wife. In those studies two important measures are progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). The first is the number of months until cancer ceases to be arrested by treatment and resumes growing and spreading, and the second is the number of months until death. So it is that such reports will contain sentences such as the one that caught my mind: “METEOR [the name of the trial] employed a novel trial design to allow for appropriate statistical power for both a primary endpoint of progression-free survival and a secondary endpoint of overall survival while avoiding over-representation of rapidly-progressing patients for the primary endpoint.”
“Rapidly-progressing patients.” Without knowing the context already, I would have mistakenly taken that to mean patients who are getting better, and that the statisticians were taking measures to not over-represent favorable outcomes. Instead it means just the opposite: rapidly-progressing patients are rapidly progressing toward death. It felt contradictory, this notion of rapid progress as a bad thing and being progression-free as a good thing.
That impulse can be found in this piece as well, with an underlying sense that early adopters are good and laggards are bad, but much of what is labeled progressive is progressive toward death, even though dressed in language coaching us that the progress is doubleplusgood. Progression-free survival is sometimes a desirable thing. Wishing you all freedom from the cancers that metastasize and disable our society, and comfort amid the pain and sadness they cause.
Well, if no one else will admit to being in the category of, “if it ain’t broke, break it,” then I will. Not on everything of course, but as far as church things go. For example, my introduction to the blacks and the priesthood issue was back when it was polite to call them negroes. My mother said something about negroes not being allowed in the temple, and I was sure my mother was wrong. I argued with her that God wouldn’t do that. It was toward the end of the 1950s. My first discussion that the church was wrong on the issue of LGBT was in the 70s with my best friend who had not come out as gay yet. So, yeah, I sure would like to break the church.
As for the other things that I am only in the early adopters or some other category, for example, I am content to wait on technology until they get some of the bugs out or the price comes into reach. Never needed the first digital camera and waited until the price was below the two K range. But, yeah way way before anyone else had one. With other technology, I am of the opinion that I do not want to be chained to a phone, and if you have a cell phone, people get angry if you leave it at home because you don’t want phone calls, so I resisted getting one. But not because I don’t like change, but because I don’t like people.
And I really think you left one category out. We will call it the “over my dead body” category. These are people who still don’t own a cell phone or who have no intention of saying the full name of the church when “Mormon” is simpler and people know what you mean. And if people get offended when you call them “Mormon” they offer to leave the “r” out. They often have what they think is good reason for not accepting the change and it is not just resisting change, but carefully deciding that this change is not a good idea for them. Their hard copy sctiptures have 40 years of notes in them. Books just feel better. The digital camera just costs too much this year. My land line doesn’t need updating every few years. It is just a fad and will go away soon.
Sometimes in technology and business the earliest innovators are ahead of their time, and while visionary, ultimately prove unsuccessful. Timing seems to be another dimension of the bell curve, with the curve generally moving left over time.
Even to this middle aged white dude, the adoption by the COJCOLDS of commonly accepted organizational best practices seems painfully slow. Diversity is not merely important it’s indispensable to organizations wanting to succeed and thrive. A church in 1900 giving women equal voice might not have been generally acceptable at the time , but on the other side of the bell curve, a church in 2020 not giving women equal voice may ultimately prove its undoing.
And btw, I was a very early adopter of digital scriptures, but I still prefer to read paper books.
“I refuse to accept unearned guilt. I also refuse to accept some earned guilt. It slows a person down. I’m busy.” I may need to cross-stitch this and hang it in my house.