Ok, let’s say that there is some kind of new product tht you would like to take hold or maybe you notice that people increasingly have been taking the side of someone or something that was once found controversial.

Or, perhaps you remember when it seemed that the the aesthetic ruling in politics was conservative but now it’s liberal. 

Once upon a time people would not give their credit card numbers out to anyone. Today they freely give them out whenever they make a purchase over the phone or online. But at one time they did not.

So what happened? What took place is  a process called “normalization” and this is so important that I can’t begin to tell you how much you need to learn it as well as find techniques to apply and maintain it.

If you want everyone using a smartphone instead of a regular phone you have to make the regular phone look obsolete. (Believe it or not there is video footage of people in the 80’s stating that they thought everyone carrying a phone around was a really dumb idea.

Another way to accomplish this is to convince a person that “everyone” is doing it this way now. Social proof.

In the example of using your credit card over the internet I remember this time period very distinctly because I worked in inside sales back in Phoenix Arizona at the time.

And do you know why people began giving their credit card numbers for purchases over the phone? Did you know at one time people would not give their personal address or full last name for the White Pages directory for their city? They would just list their initials, K.M. and then their phone number in case someone was trying to reach them from back home. They were almost paranoid.

So how did this change? It changed because of the internet. Purchasing online became to easy, fluid and sequential. And people got used to it for that reason. Also, personal information like who you were, what you liked to do, what your wife looked like, what your backyard looked like, what hobbies you practiced, pictures of you and a wife on Honeymoon kissing posted just minutes after they actually kissed. What happened to all of the paranoid people? Where’s Billy Bob and his refusal to put anything more than his initials in the White Pages?

The principal thing to happen believe it or not was Facebook. I remember this time period very distinctly. FB started out on elite University campuses for hip kids to network, see who their friend’s friends were, and look for dates.

The term wasn’t around at the time but the hip kids would become influencers on society as a whole, getting them to normalize this new behavior.

It wasn’t long before other Universities wanted in and then every University student in America was suddenly on Facebook. Newsrooms caught the story and then came the ultimatum: The public wants in on this Facebook platform, we don’t like you college kids keeping it to yourselves.

And so it happened. The hip kids from elite Universities freely posted online whatever they wanted to and fearlessly. The generation before them from blue-collar backgrounds watched wide-eyed as they did this fearing that the girl would get herself into trouble somehow. But no, she didn’t. And Billy Bob has his own Facebook page with himself sitting on his Harley on the front page.

And finally, if you are trying to normalize some new behavior or product or way of doing things, you just need to introduce an icebreaker. 

An icebreaker is when you tell someone that the new policy for XYZ is just a temporary thing but will soon be fixed by something else. Well, that something else never did happen but in the process of waiting for it for so long the new policy was practiced so many times that it has now become normalized and no one bothers the managers about it, either.

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