Engagement - a numbers game?

We can only be engaged with so many people.

Robin Dunbar calculated it at around 150, and although there is some argument around how social media impacts that, the core concept of meaningful relationships appears to hold good. We have limited emotional and attentional bandwidth, and we work best when we husband these resources.

Alfie Kohn, another respected academic, adds another angle. In his book, "punished by rewards", he demonstrates that by giving people who have vocations, those who work for the love of what they do, "hard" financially based goals, we destroy their motivation. (as ably demonstrated by current state approaches to education and health).

Bring the two together, and we underpin what we already sense. Engagement is maximised in relatively small groups doing something they believe in that is bigger than them.

Despite all the efforts we may make, we will not create engagement in the middle of the distribution curve.  Logic and intuition seems to support the notion that in …