Notes on Influencer by Kerry Patterson_1 doc

We dedicate this book to influencers everywhere—to the tenacious scholars and practitioners who, through the careful blending of theory and experience, have not only added to an ever-gro

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We dedicate this book to influencers everywhere—

to the tenacious scholars and practitioners who, through the careful blending of theory and experience, have not only added to an ever-growing knowledge of how things work, but have also curbed the cynic’s smirk, restored hope, and made it possible for each of us to become a powerful agent of change

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PART 1: The Power to Change Anything 1

Choose influence over serenity

A small group of remarkable leaders and scholars has

been quietly changing the world by influencing people’s

behavior

Big problems succumb to changes in just a

few behaviors

Changing behavior requires changing minds

PART 2: Make Change Inevitable 73

The six sources of influence

New behavior requires new skills Overinvest

in learning how to master skills and emotions

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Social Motivation

Enlist leaders, partner with opinion leaders,

and become an opinion leader yourself

Social Ability

Amplify influence through just-in-time teamwork

8 Design Rewards and Demand Accountability 193

Structural Motivation

Modestly and intelligently reward early successes

Punish only when necessary

Structural Ability

Harness the pervasive and invisible power

of environment to support new behavior

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Authors’ Note

For more than two decades we’ve felt an obligation to

write this book But the thought of capturing the gies of influence masters worldwide was a daunting task,

strate-so we did what many authors have done under similar stances We put off writing as long as we could

circum-Then three experiences convinced us that we had to writethe book The first took place in 1997 when we were practi-cally knocked over by the results of an influence project we’dbeen working on for the previous 18 months at the Fort WorthTactical Aircraft Division of Lockheed Martin—home of theF-16 fighter jet Not only had the intervention been success-

ful, but it had been remarkably successful We had assisted

lead-ers in attempts to influence a handful of key behaviors and, sureenough, the behaviors had improved substantially Moreimportantly, so had key outcomes ranging from productivity,

to costs, to quality, and employee satisfaction

With the completion of this successful change project, wehad now demonstrated on over two dozen separate projects thatwhen leaders apply sound influence theory to vexing organi-zational problems, they can dramatically improve results By

1997 over a quarter of a million employees from these twodozen companies had been touched in ways that improved notonly their organizations, but also their personal lives

We received a second nudge to write a book about ence when we initiated a study to uncover every intervention

influ-we could find that had successfully influenced behavior change

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X Authors’ Note

in organizations As we pored over the rather massive body ofliterature, we learned there were embarrassingly few examples

of leaders who had been successful at influencing employees

to act in new ways Most of the influence books and articles

we found sounded as if they had been penned by prophets ofdoom rather than professors of change

But this didn’t make any sense It wasn’t as if behaviorchange was a new topic For more than five decades social sci-entists and skilled practitioners had amassed an impressive lit-erature that demonstrated that influence efforts, when based onsound theory and implemented by a knowing practitioner, hadroutinely led to lasting improvements Perhaps it was time welocated these individuals and shared their methods

When we eventually tracked down the best of the seasonedinfluencers, we received our third and final nudge to write thisbook Their work was simply too intriguing not to share Thejourney to find them took us far beyond our corporate roots topoints scattered all over the world, but the trip was well worth

it From Bangkok to Boston, we found quiet but tenacious encers who had solved world-sized problems in world-classways—solely by influencing how people behave

influ-We were ultimately compelled to write this book when itbecame clear that the influence strategies every one of theseimpressive change agents employed were based on the sameset of theories and principles we had been applying in organi-zations for over 20 years These are ideas we learned at the feet

of renowned scholars and that we now introduce as a unifiedtheory of influence

We apologize for our procrastination At long last, meet theinfluencers

1

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The Power to Change Anything

If you’re like most people, you face several influence

chal-lenges that have you stumped For instance, at work you’refighting an uphill battle You’ve given your heart and soul

to a quality-improvement program, but your best efforts to makequality part of the everyday culture have yielded no improve-ments whatsoever None

At the personal level, you’re fighting a weight problem that

has gone on for years Actually you have a metabolism problem.

It turns out your body doesn’t burn 6,000 calories a day Talkabout bad luck

At the family level, your oldest son just turned 13, and hehangs out with a pretty frightening-looking crowd that appears

to have lost all interest in civility, decency, and hair care You’vetried reasoning and bribing and even a well-timed threat, butwhen you talk to him, there’s no one home It’s as if the day

he turned 13 your ability to influence him expired

At the community level, you have a neighbor who allowsthree vicious, three-foot-tall pit bulls to wander his backyardwith impunity The problem is his four-foot fence It’s just amatter of time until the dogs break out and run wild, but thelocal animal control people won’t do a thing about it Accord-ing to them, someone has to suffer before they can take action

To cap the whole thing off, your region of the country is goingthrough a five-year drought because apparently the world isheating up like a meatball in a microwave

And you can’t fix any of this

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4 INFLUENCER

Fortunately you’ve learned to follow the words of a

well-known prayer: Every day you ask for the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference Somehow that gets

you through

THE SERENITY TRAP

And that’s the problem It’s everyone’s problem We’ve come

to believe that when we face enormous challenges that can besolved only by influencing intractable behaviors, we mightattempt a couple of change strategies When they fail miserably,

we surrender It’s time to quit and move on We tell ourselvesthat we’re not influencers, and that it’s time to turn our atten-tion to things that are in our control We seek serenity This would be a good tactic were it not for the fact that theproblems we’ve listed—along with everything from changing theculture of an organization to eliminating HIV/AIDS transmission

to reducing drug addiction to limiting divorce—can be and havebeen resolved by someone somewhere That’s right There areactual people out there who—instead of continually seeking the

“wisdom to know the difference”—have sought the wisdom to

make a difference And they’ve found it They’ve discovered that

when it comes to changing the world, what most of us lack is

not the courage to change things, but the skill to do so.

The promise of this book is that almost all the profound,pervasive, and persistent problems we face in our lives, ourcompanies, and our world can be solved They can be solvedbecause these problems don’t require solutions that defy thelaws of nature; they require people to act differently And whileit’s true that most of us aren’t all that skilled at getting ourselvesand others to behave differently, there are experts out there who

do it all the time

In fact, one of the best-kept secrets in the world is that overthe past half century a handful of behavioral science theorists

The Power to Change Anything 5

and practitioners have discovered the power to change justabout anything So instead of pleading for the wisdom to knowwhen to give up, we should be demanding the names andaddresses of the influencers who have found solutions to theproblems we face every day We should be seeking to expandthe list of things we can change so that we don’t need to seekserenity so often

Not everyone will become influencers with a capital “I,”but everyone can learn and apply the methods and strategiesthe world’s best influencers use every day In fact, that’s the pur-pose of this book—to share the principles and skills routinelyemployed by a handful of brilliant and powerful change agents

so that readers can expand their set of influence tools and bringabout important changes in their personal lives, their families,their companies, and even their communities

Unlike most books on the topic, we don’t draw upon thetraditional way of thinking about how to exert influence by sug-gesting that the best way to help propel others to change isthrough the power of verbal persuasion Wouldn’t it be great ifyou could encourage others to stop their bad behavior with justthe right combination of words? We’ve certainly tried Legions

of leaders have attempted to turn around their latest tion by preaching on the need to “do what’s best for the largergood.” Unfortunately, it’s a rare leader who has seen this ver-bal volley alone change behavior in any noticeable way.Influence requires a lot more than the right combination ofwords

acquisi-For example, as you bite into a burger the size of a toaster,wouldn’t it be nice if one more reminder from your spouseabout how you’re digging your grave with your teeth wouldactually inspire you to swear off fast food forever? But it’s notgoing to happen

Instead of merely drawing on the power of persuasion, weexplore the full array of strategies successful influencers useevery day (often in combination) to change lifelong habits and

For example, consider the following ongoing tragedy Everyyear over 3,000 Americans drown—many of them in publicpools This ugly statistic remained unchanged until a team oftenacious leaders from the YMCA and Redwoods Insurancedecided to abandon serenity and search for a workable changestrategy It wasn’t long before they reduced fatal accidents atYMCA pools by two-thirds simply by employing a few of theinfluence strategies we’re about to study

To reduce the senseless loss of lives, the team found a way

to encourage YMCA lifeguards to alter how they performedtheir job Now that’s no easy challenge because it requires theability to exert influence over hundreds of teenage employeesacross the organization However, when it came to guarding,the team discovered that one vital behavior—something theycalled “10/10 scanning”—was a key to saving lives By using afew of the principles we cover in this book, they were able tozero in on and change a key behavior

It turns out that traditional lifeguards spend much of theirtime greeting members, adjusting swim lanes, picking up kick-boards, or testing pool chemicals However, when lifeguardsstand in a specific spot and scan their section of the pool every

10 seconds and then offer assistance to anyone in troublewithin 10 seconds, drowning rates drop by two-thirds To date,scores of communities have been spared the devastating loss of

a life because a handful of clever influencers looked for a way

to change behavior rather than accepting the existing reality And while we’re talking about saving lives, let’s take a look

at an influence effort that has saved—and created—tens of

thousands of jobs In 2006 alone (during the writing of this

The Power to Change Anything 7

book), the chronic influence failures of the leaders of Detroitauto companies resulted in the cumulative dismissal of tens ofthousands of career employees Yet at the same time, Toyota

added tens of thousands of jobs not just in Japan, but in North

America Toyota has grown consistently while U.S auto

com-panies have declined because Toyota’s leaders have perfected

a system of influence that engages all employees in ous improvement

continu-CHOOSING INFLUENCE

The reason most of us pray for serenity rather than doggedlyseeking a new solution to what ails us is that, left to our owndevices, we don’t come up with the big ideas that solve theproblems that have us stumped We fall into the serenity trapevery time we seek solace when we should be seeking a solu-tion To bring this problem to its knees, we first have to see our-selves as influencers This revised self-image calls for adeviation from the existing norm Rarely do people say that theycurrently are, or that one day they will be, an influencer

“When I grow up, I’m going to move to New York City,where I plan on being a professional influencer!”

“Who me? I work for IBM I’m the chief influenceofficer.”

“Yes, I’m married with two children, so I guess I’m ing pretty much full time as an influencer.”

work-We typically don’t think of ourselves as influencers cause we fail to see that the common thread runningthrough most of the triumphs and tragedies of our lives is ourability to exert influence If we did, we’d invest enormousenergy in looking for new and better ways to enhance ourinfluence repertoire For instance, every time we tried to exertinfluence over others with a few well-chosen words and noth-ing happened, we’d stop talking and try something new Everytime we tried an incentive and it failed, we’d try something