Three-Level Value Change Flywheel
Move a new value from personal practice into shared social norms
- Difficulty
- Expert
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
The Three-Level Value Change Flywheel sequences cultural change from the personal to the systemic. First, individuals adopt a perspective and use it to see their own lives and decisions differently. Second, they carry that language into places where they already exercise leadership, such as homes and workplaces, and invite others to consider the same consequences. Third, institutions slowly redefine norms by creating values, metrics, products, practices, and funded projects that make the perspective routine. Each level broadens reach and reinforcement: personal practice supplies credibility, social sharing makes the idea legible, and structural embedding reduces dependence on individual champions. Strickler presents the final norms layer as the slowest flywheel but also the one with the greatest impact.
Origin
Strickler described this three-level path while explaining how Bentoism could move from thousands of individual practitioners toward an assumed social norm over a 30-year period.
Core principles
- 01Social change begins when individuals see their lives differently
- 02Leaders spread a perspective through homes and workplaces
- 03Norms change slowly but create the largest flywheel
- 04Metrics and products can make balanced values part of ordinary life
How to run it
- 1
Change the personal lens
Use the new perspective in your own life until it changes how you interpret real decisions.
Pro tip A recurring practice makes the idea more than an intellectual preference.
Watch out Do not advocate a value you have not tried to practice.
- 2
Spread it through leadership
Introduce the perspective in your home, workplace, or other setting where people already look to you for direction.
Pro tip Ask a concrete question such as ‘Have we thought about the Future Us consequences?’
Watch out Avoid presenting the language as a complicated doctrine.
- 3
Name the new value
Define what creating or harming the desired value looks like so people can recognize and discuss it together.
Pro tip Create a shared vocabulary or ‘genre of value’ that makes invisible consequences easier to see.
- 4
Build reinforcing measures
Develop values and metrics that guide behavior beyond financial outcomes and make the desired choices observable.
Watch out A metric can distort the goal if it becomes the only definition of success.
- 5
Embed the norm
Incorporate the perspective into products, recurring practices, businesses, art, and funded projects so it persists beyond individual advocacy.
Pro tip Support multiple forms of expression rather than relying on one institution.
Watch out Norm change is the slowest stage; do not confuse slow movement with no movement.
In the wild
Individuals first use Bentoism to see their choices differently. They then ask Future Us questions in workplaces and homes. Over time, communities can define non-financial values and metrics, normalize balanced long- and short-term thinking in digital products, and fund businesses, projects, and art that reinforce those values.
→ A personal decision tool gains a pathway toward becoming an embedded social norm.
A manager first stops rewarding their own late-night work, then introduces capacity checks in team planning. The company later tracks recovery time after launches and builds it into project reviews. What began as one person's behavior becomes a repeatable organizational expectation.
→ The desired value becomes reinforced by both leadership behavior and operating systems.
Common mistakes
Jumping straight to policy
Structural language without personal practice or social understanding can create compliance without genuine adoption.
Stopping at awareness
Individual insight remains fragile unless people share it and institutions reinforce it through norms and practices.
Expecting the flywheel to move quickly
Norms are the slowest level of change even though they eventually carry the greatest scale.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders, communities, and movement builders pursuing a long-term shift in how people define value.
Not ideal for
Campaigns that require a guaranteed short-term behavioral result from a single intervention.
From the transcript
“it starts with individuals just seeing their own lives differently”
“the second step is people sharing this perspective in their workplaces and their homes like the other places where we're leaders”
“finally the third and the slowest moving flywheel but the biggest is how our norms get redefined by these kinds of changes”
From the episode
Yancey Strickler: Bentoism For a Better World
Yancey Strickler