Anytime you do anything, no matter how small or big, there will always be three groups of people involved. How we interact with these groups can affect the outcome of our decisions and projects. If you don't know they exist it can be detrimental to what you're working on. If you know who they are and how to deal with them, a great deal of pain can be avoided, and you will put yourself in a better position to succeed.
The first group are those who agree with whatever is it you're doing. This group is easy to deal with as they are already in agreement. You don't have to do anything special with this group. We're not going to spend any time talking about them.
The second group is reasonable people who will listen to what you have to say. Some will come to agree with you, some won't. The ones who don't agree with you possibly won't even tell you they disagree with you. If what you're doing is a good idea you'll get almost everyone in the second group to support you, if you don't ignore them. This is the group you ignore the most, but it's where you should put most of your energy.
The third group is filled with unreasonable people. These are people that you can prove your point beyond a reasonable doubt and they still won't believe you. There is absolutely nothing you can say to this group that will make a difference. These are the people who deny evidence, you can't understand why they deny the facts, and you will spend most of your time trying to bring them to your side. This group is not only disagreeable, its' dangerous to your cause. You waste your time with the third group while you alienate the second group. This is where most people incorrectly invest almost all their time and energy.
The second group will view the conversations between the first group and the third group and decide they're both insane. Members of the first and third group are generally there for some emotional reason. They're not always using facts or reality to justify their position. You cannot convince someone if they believe they have the moral high ground. So don't try.
Time spent trying to convince the third group is time not spend engaging the second group. Nobody wants to be ignored.
The Example
As always, these concepts are easier to understand with an example. Let's use climate change because the third group is really loud, but not very large.
The first group are the climate scientists. Pretty much all of them. They agree that climate change is real.
The second group is most people. Some have heard about climate change, a lot will believe it's real. Some could be a bit skeptical but with a little coddling they'll come around.
The third group are the deniers. These people are claiming that CO2 is a vegetable. They will never change their minds. No really never. I bet you just thought about how you could convince them just now. See how easy this trap is?
The first group spends huge amounts of time trying to talk to the third group. How often do you hear of debates, or rebuttals, or "conversations" between the first and third group here. How often do you hear about the scientists trying to target the second group? Even if it is happening it's not interesting so only first-third interactions get the attention.
The second group will start to think the scientists are just as looney as the third group. Most conversations between group one and three will end in shouting. A reasonable person won't know who to believe. The only way around this is to ignore the third group completely. Any time you spend talking to the third group hurts your relationship with the second group.
What now?
Start to think about the places you see this in your own dealings. Password debates. Closed vs open source. Which language is best. The list could go on forever. How do you usually approach these? Do you focus on the people who disagree with you instead of the people who are in the middle?
The trick with security is we have no idea how to even talk to the second group. And we rather enjoy arguing with the third. While talking to the second group can be tricky, the biggest thing at this point is to just know when you're burning time and good will by engaging with the third group. Walk away, you can't win, failure is the only option if you keep arguing.
Join the conversation, hit me up on twitter, I'm @joshbressers