How to make change stick in legal teams

Moore’s insights are particularly relevant at a time when businesses are turning to legal teams to help them do things differently – whether through the use of new technology, process changes or entirely new delivery models.

More than Moore’s Law

Gordon Moore was co-founder of Intel Corporation, and unarguably one of the grandfathers of modern technology.

When Moore passed away recently, the tributes focused on what became known as “Moore’s Law” – his observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. The “Law” held true for more than half a century.

Less well-known, but of more day-to-day relevance to the roles of most professionals, is his application of the technology adoption life cycle. This concept originated from research in the 1950s on the adoption of new farming methods and came to be used more broadly for identifying the characteristics of the groups who adopt a new technology at different points in its maturity. 

The application of this lesser-known theory from Moore could be particularly helpful to many in-house legal teams today – many are looking at technology or other process changes as a solution to improve productivity and efficiencies but in some cases are facing a challenge in this regard as the solutions are not yet being implemented by enough people to make the change stick.

The cycle tracks how, at the beginning, innovators – companies or individuals – pursue new technologies ‘aggressively’ to gain an early advantage. They are in the minority. Over time, these enthusiastic innovators are followed by early adopters, as more embrace the new ideas. It is a while before the solution proves itself, at which point the cycle picks up pace, with the early majority getting on board, before the late majority join the market. This group are those who wait and see and adopt a new approach or technology once it has been firmly established and the benefits are clear. Making up the full cycle are the “laggards” – those who reluctantly adopt new ideas, if they ever do.

Moore’s insight was to recognise a gap – the so-called Moore Chasm – which presents itself between early adopters and the early majority. This pause is caused by new technologies and approaches simply proving too difficult to use, relative to their benefits, and as a result, they simply fade away. They never get adopted by the majority, and their benefits remain unrealised.

Moore wrote about this in “Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers” in 1991. For many in the technology sales business, it is a “bible” of wisdom and techniques, but the lessons and issues are just as relevant to all who are looking to bring in a new way of doing things – and not just those based on IT.

Moore’s Chasm in today’s world of business change

Today we see technologies such as artificial intelligence swing into the mainstream with platforms like ChatGPT. But change in organisations might be a new way of instructing legal, adopting an outsourced delivery model, or even making best use of remote working. Moore recognised that early and late adopters of new ideas have very different outlooks and expectations from each other, and also from the innovators and the early adopters, and he looked at how a new product can be positioned so it appeals to the businesses and individuals with differing mindsets, suggesting separate approaches to embed new methods with each group.

As we support legal teams to introduce new ways of doing things, we see the adoption cycle and Moore’s Chasm in many managed legal services engagements. It remains a helpful way of understanding not just how companies as a whole embrace change, but how individuals within a team also approach new technologies and methods. Within a team, it is highly likely there will be a diverse mix of backgrounds, interests and perspectives, meaning that some will happily be early adopters whilst others will be more cynical of change and risk-averse.

For in-house legal team leaders, understanding the mix of personalities in your team and how the psychology of change affects people’s reaction to new ways of doing things is important. Using the technology adoption life cycle to plot individuals’ attitudes and plan engagement approaches can be a helpful way of recognising where you are as a team and formulating specific strategies to ensure change – be it technology, process or a new way of using people power.

The relevant messages from Moore’s theory in this regard are:

• choose carefully where you are going to start – you need to engage the enthusiasts and the early adopters to get anywhere, but be clear on what you are going to roll out first. You might not have data to support you on this – so trust your gut instinct, built through knowledge of your business and its people;
• recognise that word of mouth is still the best way to persuade others to change.  Enable, facilitate and broadcast good news and success stories. Be relentless;
• even if you are rolling out only parts at first, be clear what might be coming next and later. The enthusiasts and early adopters will want to know what the whole solution looks like – where are you going?
• make the new “thing” and information about it easy to access. If people have to seek it out, that in itself will be a barrier to getting on.

Moore’s legacy lives on – although new technologies come and go and are unrecognisable from what was around when Moore wrote about this in 1991, the way people react to change and his approaches to technology adoption are still as helpful and relevant today.