Twelve on the corniche

A walking group meets on the Al Khobar corniche three evenings a week. It began with four women from one building. Now there are about twelve, and the woman who started it keeps being asked to make it bigger.

The temptation is understandable. Walking is good for everyone, so why not invite everyone? A city-wide group, a page, a logo.

But a few hundred people is not a group. Nobody notices who is missing on Tuesday. Nobody waits for the slow walker. It becomes a crowd that happens to share a pavement.

The opposite mistake is quieter. Stay at four, close friends, nobody stretched, nothing changing. Comfortable, and a little pointless. A group that never asks anything of its members is not doing much for them either.

Twelve is about right, and the real work now is not recruitment. It is making the twelve closer: knowing each other's names and knees, a message when someone has not turned up, a habit of bringing a sister or a neighbour once a month and walking beside her the whole way.

That last part is what lets it grow without breaking. The founder is not the one inviting people. The members are, each to someone they already know, and each newcomer arrives already attached to a person.

This is how most habits that matter spread. Not by being announced to everyone at once, but through a group of the right size, connected well enough that its members carry it outward themselves, and get stronger each time they do.