Leadership is about many things, some of them quite lofty: setting a strategic direction, creating a shared sense of purpose, modeling behaviors you hope to see in others. But effective leadership often boils down to something more mundane — getting people to do things they would rather not do. Maybe it’s returning to the office three days a week after working remotely for so long. Maybe it’s reinventing performance reviews, or launching a new product that disrupts an old favorite. If the work of leadership is the work of change, then overcoming the natural tendency to resist change has to be at the top of every leader’s agenda.

More than 150 years ago, Herman Melville created one of the most unforgettable (and infuriating) business characters of American literature. Melville’s short story introduced readers to Bartleby the Scrivener, a low-level employee at a Wall Street law firm whom, when asked to do even the most basic task, or make the smallest change to his routine, would respond, “I prefer not to.” Now, I’m not suggesting your colleagues are modern-day versions of Bartleby, but when it comes to getting on board with new ways to work, sell, or innovate, the hard truth is that many people would prefer not to.

So how do leaders persuade people to do things they would rather not do? Social scientists have been wrestling with that question for decades. They devised lots of experiments that helped them to identify two very different persuasive techniques. Each of these techniques can work in the right situation, although neither of them translates perfectly from the ivory-tower world of social-science research into the messy realities of organizational life. But both techniques can help leaders reflect the hard work of making big change, and what is required to get beyond what management theorists like to call “active inertia” — the tendency for people and organizations to seek comfort in the old ways of doing things, even (or especially) when the world around them is changing dramatically.

The “Foot-in-the-Door” Technique

One answer, which psychologists call the “foot-in-the-door” technique, is that the best way to get people to change something big, or do something hard, is to first ask them to change something small, or do something easy. By agreeing to the request, and then meeting it, people develop a sense of commitment and confidence that makes them more enthusiastic about agreeing to the next (bigger) request. In other words, the path to big change is paved by lots of small steps and little bets — each of which builds on what’s come before.

In their landmark article on the foot-in-the-door technique, Stanford professors Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser noted that in most societies and organizations, “it is somewhat difficult to refuse a reasonable request,” so starting small makes it hard for people to say no. But then, “once someone has agreed to take any action, no matter how small,” they “tend to feel more involved” in the situation, and are thus more likely to agree to even bigger actions. The virtue of this technique is that it leads to “compliance without pressure” — people are invited to do something new rather than compelled to do it. The logic goes, in the spirit of that familiar adage, if you persuade people to move an inch, eventually they may move a mile.

I’ve seen the foot-in-the-door technique work well, even if leaders who adopted the approach never used the actual term. Consider the rise of Megabus, a cutting-edge player in a tradition-bound industry, that amounts to a corporate case study of the persuasive power of getting a foot in the door. Today, Megabus looks like a textbook disruptor — a sleek, colorful, widely recognized company that shuttles college students, young professionals, and weekend tourists between city centers across the country. As a business and a brand, it is a breakthrough performer, with all the characteristics of a blank-sheet-of-paper startup.

But Megabus was launched inside one of the biggest transportation conglomerates in the world, a 40-year-old outfit based in Scotland, by company veterans who would never be confused with twenty-somethings from Silicon Valley. The leaders of Megabus were able to make such dramatic changes because they persuaded their colleagues to consider and act on a series of small changes: What if we used a new kind of bus? What if we eliminated stops along our routes and made only express connections? What if these routes connected smaller cities that were close together, rather than big cities that were far apart? What if we tried a paperless ticketing system?

Each of these small changes had plenty of doubters. But as people saw that they worked, there was appetite for more. As Megabus USA’s CEO told me, “This was a test, an initiative, a small bet on where travel could be heading. There was no guru saying, This is the future of bus travel.” Or, as one of the technologists behind the launch told me, Megabus began “as a wee little experiment” that blossomed into “a major part” of the Stagecoach company.

By posing a set of small what-if questions and asking colleagues to engage in a series of modest steps, the leaders of Megabus got a foot in the door that blew the doors of the business wide open.