The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can - By Gladwell, Malcolm Page 0,67

strangers to one another.” The Hutterites, obviously, didn’t get this idea from contemporary evolutionary psychology. They’ve been following the 150 rule for centuries. But their rationale fits perfectly with Dunbar’s theories. At 150, the Hutterites believe, something happens—something indefinable but very real—that somehow changes the nature of community overnight. “In smaller groups people are a lot closer. They’re knit together, which is very important if you want to be effective and successful at community life,” Gross said. “If you get too large, you don’t have enough work in common. You don’t have enough things in common, and then you start to become strangers and that close knit fellowship starts to get lost.” Gross spoke from experience. He had been in Hutterite colonies that had come near to that magic number and seen firsthand how things had changed. “What happens when you get that big is that the group starts, just on its own, to form a sort of clan.” He made a gesture with his hands, as if to demonstrate division. “You get two or three groups within the larger group. That is something you really try to prevent, and when it happens it is a good time to branch out.”

3.

We have seen, in this book, how a number of relatively minor changes in our external environment can have a dramatic effect on how we behave and who we are. Clean up graffiti and all of a sudden people who would otherwise commit crimes suddenly don’t. Tell a seminarian that he has to hurry and all of a sudden he starts to ignore bystanders in obvious distress. The Rule of 150 suggests that the size of a group is another one of those subtle contextual factors that can make a big difference. In the case of the Hutterites, people who are willing to go along with the group, who can be easily infected with the community ethos below the level of 150, somehow, suddenly—with just the smallest change in the size of the community—become divided and alienated. Once that line, that Tipping Point, is crossed, they begin to behave very differently.

If we want groups to serve as incubators for contagious messages, then, as they did in the case of Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood or the early Methodist church, we have to keep groups below the 150 Tipping Point. Above that point, there begin to be structural impediments to the ability of the group to agree and act with one voice. If we want to, say, develop schools in disadvantaged communities that can successfully counteract the poisonous atmosphere of their surrounding neighborhoods, this tells us that we’re probably better off building lots of little schools than one or two big ones. The Rule of 150 says that congregants of a rapidly expanding church, or the members of a social club, or anyone in a group activity banking on the epidemic spread of shared ideals needs to be particularly cognizant of the perils of bigness. Crossing the 150 line is a small change that can make a big difference.

Perhaps the best example of an organization that has successfully navigated this problem is Gore Associates, a privately held, multimillion dollar high tech firm based in Newark, Delaware. Gore is the company that makes the water resistant Gore Tex fabric, as well as Glide dental floss, special insulating coatings for computer cables, and a variety of sophisticated specialty cartridges, filter bags, and tubes for the automobile, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, and medical industries. At Gore there are no titles. If you ask people who work there for their card, it will just say their name and underneath it the word “Associate,” regardless of how much money they make or how much responsibility they have or how long they have been at the company. People don’t have bosses, they have sponsors—mentors—who watch out for their interests. There are no organization charts, no budgets, no elaborate strategic plans. Salaries are determined collectively. Headquarters for the company is a low slung, unpretentious red brick building. The “executive” offices are small, plainly furnished rooms, along a narrow corridor. The corners of Gore buildings tend to be conference rooms or free space, so that no one can be said to have a more prestigious office. When I visited a Gore associate named Bob Hen, at one of the company’s plants in Delaware, I tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to tell me what his position was. I suspected, from the fact that he had been recommended to me, that