The sports indus­try is very famil­iar with the “band­wag­on” effect, but this is also high­ly vis­i­ble in every aspect of life.  It’s when some­one comes up with an idea and every­one starts talk­ing about it.  They go along with it, even if they dis­agree because every­one else in the group has ral­lied behind it.

“The prob­lem with pop­u­lar think­ing is that it does not require you to think at all…good think­ing is hard work.” John Maxwell

Often times we miss out on oppor­tu­ni­ties or more so peo­ple miss out on us because one indi­vid­ual said you weren’t the right mix.  We’ve heard sto­ries of suc­cess­ful peo­ple who were reject­ed many times before some brave soul or orga­ni­za­tion gave them a chance.  Peo­ple assume oth­er peo­ple are mak­ing sound judg­ments, even if those judg­ments con­tra­dict their own.  Many peo­ple look for safe­ty and secu­ri­ty in pop­u­lar think­ing.  This is ter­ri­ble.  This is what Jeff Suther­land calls, “The Band­wag­on Effect.”  Accord­ing to Suther­land, this isn’t a fail­ure of will; this is the nature of peo­ple.

Can you recall a time when you heard an idea intro­duced by a peer in upper man­age­ment or the “leader” of a group and you thought it was real­ly bad, but said noth­ing about it?  You felt sil­ly and mis­in­formed so you kept mum.  Months lat­er that bright idea was a com­plete and utter fail­ure.  We fig­ure that if a lot of peo­ple are agree­ing on some­thing than it must be a good idea.  Peo­ple manip­u­late the emo­tions and opin­ions of oth­ers in every aspect of life and fight­ing this human nature is like fight­ing grav­i­ty.

So what then?  Has this sto­ry no solu­tion?  What I rec­om­mend we do is pay close atten­tion to who and what we sup­port.  We must always keep in mind that there is a dif­fer­ence between accep­tance and intel­li­gence.  Some­times you have to stand alone and be will­ing to be unpop­u­lar.  Fall out of love with the sta­tus quo.