Book
The Logic of Collective Action
Mancur Olson
Explains why people who genuinely share an interest still do not act on it. If you are waiting for others to care enough to turn up, this is the most useful uncomfortable book available.
Tool 55 · Develop your mission
Is this a mission, or a preference?
Concluding that not enough people care yet is a legitimate result, and it is not a verdict on you.
A guided 16 to 20 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
Who has done something you did not ask them to do?
That is the whole question, and it usually has a very short answer.
People agreeing that something matters is a courtesy. It is not a signal.
What you'll explore
- 01The mission in plain words
- 02Who lives with it
- 03Who has acted
- 04What happened after
A note from Mark
I have watched people run on approval for two years. It is the most misleading fuel available, because it is warm, it is constant, and it is entirely disconnected from whether anybody will act. The room agreeing with you tells you the room is decent. It tells you nothing about the mission.
What I would look for is the second person. Not the second supporter. The second person who did something you did not ask them to do. That is the moment a preference becomes a mission, and it is usually small and unimpressive when it happens.
Read my full view ↓
I would also be careful about the difference between people not caring and people not being able to act. Plenty of people care sincerely about problems that are not theirs, and there is a ceiling on that which no amount of persuasion moves. Knowing where the ceiling is saves years.
And I would want you to name the number before you go looking. Ten people. Three messages. One organisation. Otherwise you will find whatever result you already wanted, and so will I.
What you'll get
You won't finish with a personality type.You'll leave with answers you can actually test.
01
Approval against action
02
Who acted unprompted
03
What pull looks like
04
One test
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
See everything included ↓
- 01The mission, as you describe it
- 02Who actually experiences this
- 03Who talks about it
- 04Who has acted
- 05What people have said
- 06Approval against behaviour
- 07Who would pay or contribute
- 08Who would advocate
- 09What credible external pull would look like
- 10The rival reading
- 11What deserves protecting
- 12The credible alternative
- 13What this exercise cannot decide
- 14What remains unresolved
- 15The one test of pull
What now?
01 · Save it
Who genuinely experiences this.
02 · Test it
Ask three people to do one specific small thing.
Explore this further ↓
What I would do
- 01
Write down who has acted, not who has agreed.
- 02
Ask people for something small and see what returns.
- 03
Watch what happens in the fortnight after a good conversation.
- 04
Define what pull looks like before going to look for it.
- 05
Be willing to conclude it is early.
Test it
- 01
Who has done something without being asked?
- 02
What happened in the two weeks after the last good conversation?
- 03
What would have to happen for you to conclude nobody else cares yet?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that people either care or they do not. The finding is usually more specific. Often people care sincerely and will never act, because the problem is not theirs and sympathy does not convert into Saturdays. That is not apathy and treating it as apathy will exhaust a founder within a year. Occasionally the opposite is true and the pull is already there, unnoticed, because it arrived as three separate messages from strangers rather than as a crowd. And sometimes the mission is right and simply described in language nobody can act on, which looks identical to indifference from the inside and has an entirely different remedy.
Think about this
- Who actually lives with this, as opposed to who ought to care.
- Who has done something, and what.
- What happened after the enthusiasm.
- Whether anybody has acted without being asked.
- What number would count as real pull.
Take this to Ask Mark
You've done the exercise. Now challenge what came back.
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
Who do you need around you
When the pull is real and the constraint is people
Further thinking
The Logic of Collective Action
Mancur Olson
Governing the Commons
Elinor Ostrom
Moral hypocrisy: appearing moral to oneself without being so
C. Daniel Batson and colleagues
Explore the thinking ↓
Book
Governing the Commons
Elinor Ostrom
Field evidence that ordinary groups do organise themselves successfully, under identifiable conditions. The counterweight to assuming nobody will ever care enough to act together.
Article
Moral hypocrisy: appearing moral to oneself without being so
C. Daniel Batson and colleagues
Batson's experiments put people in situations where acting fairly cost them something and nobody would know. Most preferred to appear moral to themselves rather than to be moral, and were remarkably good at not noticing. It is a useful piece of evidence to hold when you are describing the distance between what you say you value and what you did last month.
Book
Bowling Alone
Robert Putnam
Putnam's account of the decline of associational life is contested and largely American, and it still changes how you count your own contribution. Membership, attendance and turning up repeatedly for something small are treated here as real civic goods rather than as lesser versions of writing a cheque.