Let’s get real: Geoffrey Moore didn’t come up with the technology adoption curve so your innovation team could print fancy PowerPoints. The chasm isn’t a metaphor; it’s a graveyard for noble ambitions and a retirement home for forgotten pilots.
Here’s how it usually goes:
First you get the innovation freaks—the whiteboard tinkerers and LinkedIn influencers. Then your “early majority,” chasing efficiency. Waves of nodding Zoom faces. But the late majority and those so-called laggards? That’s where your shiny AI dreams go to die—unless you understand the wiring under their skepticism.
Why Laggards Aren’t Just Obstructionists
The late adopters aren’t dumb, anti-tech, or dragging their feet for fun. They’re institutional memory in human form. Their skepticism is the cholesterol test for your strategy—annoying, but it’ll save your ass.
What Keeps Them Up at Night:
- Job security: Every “we’re automating X” demo is read as: “So… who’s next out the door?”
- Loss of expertise: Years of “gut feel” and war stories replaced by models trained on sanitized project data? That’s not innovation—that’s erasure.
- Support after launch: Nobody wants to party with the new platform for two months, only for it to be a ghost town at the first maintenance window.
- Change fatigue: Five “strategic transformations” in five years = learned caution, not some character flaw.
The Superpower of Reluctance
Treat laggards like dead weight and you’ll miss your flight. But bring them in, warts and all, and two things happen:
- They pressure-test your fairy tales. Laggards, who probably wrote the process docs you’re about to automate, will find every hidden, fragile step your “digital transformation” misses.
- Compliance and ethics live here. These folks smell risk like a bloodhound. If your rollout can’t survive their nose, you’re not ready.
- Only they know the true cost of change. You budgeted for software, but they know about the hallway workarounds and tribal knowledge written nowhere. Ignore them, and the black swans multiply.
Harnessing Reluctance: Your Real Go-to-Market Move
Forget the launch party. Involve laggards early, but throw out the “dog and pony” show. Here’s your playbook:
- Real Q&A, not kabuki theater. Let the skeptics pepper you with questions, the more uncomfortable, the better.
- Pilot on their terms. A slow(er) rollout, where brakes can actually be pumped, is less risky than a post-launch revolt.
- Track what they care about. Skip the boardroom vanity stats. Show them what keeps their world running (errors down, workflow faster, fewer panicked Slack DMs).
- Celebrate their wins—publicly. Make the resistant heroes, not scapegoats.
Quick Links for the Journey
- Go-to-Market: Adoption Strategies Across the Curve (HubSpot)
- Late Adopters as Sustainable Innovators (MIT Sloan Review)
Bottom Line
You don’t “drag” people over the chasm—you build the bridge with their help. The organizations that win respect that skepticism isn’t a bug; it’s quality control. Embrace the doubters, and your rollout might actually make it to the other side (with your headcount, sanity, and ethics intact).