The Work Required for Change

We like to tell stories about tipping points. We look at the landmark cases or individual actions that sparked a cascade of change in the past and wonder how we can re-create them to push our current system into a new state. Using the mental model of critical mass, however, reminds us that it is equally important to pay attention to the effort involved in the buildup.

A system becomes critical when it is on the verge of changing from one state to another. The unit of input that causes the change is just like all the ones that came before it, yet it has a disproportionate impact—think of the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Before critical mass is reached, the system can carry the existing weight or maintain its equilibrium. But once a threshold is crossed, even the tiniest additional nudge can tip the whole thing into a new configuration. As the nuclear chain reaction taught us and game theorist Thomas Schelling later noted when he applied the term to social behavior, critical mass describes the moment when a process becomes self-sustaining.

Thresholds differ across systems. At ordinary atmospheric pressure, water at 211°F remains liquid and at 212°F can boil as heat is supplied. A business may generate enough revenue to fund its own growth. Vaccination coverage can reduce transmission enough to interrupt an outbreak. These are useful threshold analogies, though their mechanisms differ. In social systems, sustained adoption depends on who participates, how people interact, and what keeps them involved. The final petition or closing sale may succeed because earlier efforts made it effective.

Historical Example: Women's Suffrage in New Zealand

In September 1893, New Zealand became the first self-governing country to give most adult women the right to vote in parliamentary elections. American women would not earn this right for another twenty-seven years and British women for twenty-five. An important thing to understand about women’s suffrage in New Zealand is that it was far from a sudden change, even if it may have appeared as such from afar. Through the efforts of many people over many years, there was a slow shift of the Overton window to the point where women being able to vote became reasonable in the minds of enough people to move the voting system into a new state.

Several features of New Zealand’s society helped the movement organize. Many settlers wanted a fairer society than the European one they had left behind. The population figures given here—under 750,000 in 1893, including 40,000 Maori—suggest the scale of the country, though population size alone does not determine how much support a movement needs. Prominent male politicians offered early backing and helped suffragists gain a foothold in Parliament.

Women receiving equal access to education in New Zealand was another key factor in the buildup of opinion change to critical mass. Due to the campaigning of educationalist Learmonth Dalrymple, girls received the same secondary education as boys, with the first school for girls opening in 1871. Dalrymple also successfully ensured women were able to attend university, where they made up half the student body by 1893. Greater education led to improved employment prospects outside the home, beyond the customary option of domestic labor. More and more women entered the workforce once they had better education, gaining social influence in areas such as teaching, journalism, medicine, and the arts. When they faced worse working conditions than men, New Zealander women began to unionize.

In many ways, the New Zealander suffrage movement was entwined with the temperance movement, which sought to restrict or prohibit the consumption of alcohol. Throughout the nineteenth century, alcohol became a growing problem in many countries, leading to poverty, violence, crime, and harm to family life. For New Zealanders, it was particularly harmful among men working in the agricultural, maritime, and industrial industries. As in many other countries, it was reported that many men drank away their wages before even making it home on the weekend, leaving their wives and children bereft. Because women tended to suffer the most as a result of widespread heavy drinking, they were influential in the movement.

Although the temperance movement never achieved the aim of total prohibition in New Zealand, it constructed a framework for women to politically organize. Alongside unionization, it gave women the confidence that they could have influence if they worked together in sufficient numbers with clear goals and a sense of focus. As Patricia Grimshaw writes in Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand, “Women, on the practical side, learned the arts of organization, administration, and leadership which could be turned to use in later years in their own cause. Women, on the ideological side, entered a sphere in which a new outlook on their basic rights developed rapidly, spurring them to aim at the realization of their full rights as women.”

Kate Sheppard’s suffrage movement built on these changes. In the early 1890s, she organized several petitions for women’s voting rights and presented them to Parliament. After initial failures, the movement gained support. By 1893, the petition had amassed thirty-two thousand signatures. The bill eventually passed narrowly. The petition was a visible part of that success, supported by years of organizing, changes in public opinion, and political negotiation.

New Zealand’s success gave suffrage campaigners elsewhere an example of what was possible. Women’s political rights spread further after World War II, through movements with their own histories and political conditions. New Zealand helped demonstrate that change was possible; it did not by itself trigger every later reform.

Key Lessons

When we look back at significant social changes, it’s important to recognize the work involved in building a critical mass. Often things happen slowly and then all at once—but only because of the steady accumulation that came before. Women getting the vote in New Zealand was the result of years of effort on many different fronts to build the capabilities needed to change opinions. The final petition did not achieve the result on its own; it was powerful because public sentiment, organizational capacity, and political support had all been loaded onto the system over decades.

A system can sometimes change after only some of its participants adopt a new practice. Who those participants are can matter as much as their number. Early backing from politicians helped New Zealand’s suffragists advance their case in Parliament. It still took broader organizing and repeated attempts to secure the vote.

To use this model, ask what would allow the process to continue without the same level of outside effort. A business might need recurring revenue; a movement might need local groups capable of recruiting and organizing on their own. Look for evidence that such conditions are developing. An apparent threshold is an estimate, and a small final push will not always produce a lasting change.