BOOK REVIEW: Influencer: the Power to Change Anything (By Kerry Patterson et al., McGraw Hill, 2008, ISBN #978-0-07-148499-2)
BOOK REVIEW: Influencer: the Power to Change Anything (By Kerry Patterson et al., McGraw Hill, 2008, ISBN #978-0-07-148499-2)
There is only one problem, say the authors of this excellent book. This approach rarely works. Why? Because it so often comes across as parental, manipulating, nagging, not their solution, serving someone else's interest, and so forth. All these are sound reasons why people push back and hold on tenaciously to their current behavior.
Master Influencers
The authors claim, however, that there exists a proven array of approaches to influencing new behavior, whether that be of one person or a country's entire population. The writers followed the accomplishments of a number of individuals who have successfully applied influence strategies to problems that others have been trying to solve, in some cases for centuries.
Here are just three of these "master influencers":
Dr. Mimi Silbert whose San Francisco organization, Delancey Street Foundation, runs a number of enterprises (restaurant, repair shop, moving company) that hires convicted felons, homeless persons, lifetime drug addicts, hardened gang members and the like. Of those who join Delancey, less than 10% return to their former life.
Dr. Donald Hopkins of The Carter Center. In 1986 the Center declared war on the Guinea Worm that was infesting the village populations of 20 countries in Africa and southern Asia. Within twenty years their programs reduced the number of cases from 3.5 million to under 10,000.
Dr. Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn in Thailand's Ministry of Public Health between 1989 and 1993 cut the number of new HIV cases by 80%, saving five million Thais from contracting this terrible disease.
Their Approaches
From studying how these and other change geniuses were so successful, it became apparent that the approaches they employed have some things in common.
They first identify the vital behaviors that are at the root of the problem and need to change. This often requires investigating examples of "positive deviance," situations or locations where the problem should exist but doesn't.
They then focus their efforts strategically on changing only these few behaviors. Alter these and the problem topples.
Obviously, the second step is the more difficult one. That said, how did they go about it? Again in common, they tended to work through an array of six sources of influence that, together, respond to two concerns of any individual or group being asked to change their behavior:
Is it worth it to me to change?
Can I do it?
The first of these two concerns refers to the motivation that has to be present in anyone who successfully shifts their behavior. The second speaks to their ability to do it. Six strategies are derived by approaching motivation and ability through three perspectives: personal, social and structural/environmental.
The Six Sources Of Influence
PERSONAL - MOTIVATION
Sometimes the required ("vital") behavior is not seen as pleasant. You need to reframe it in their mind as leading to positive, desirable outcomes.
PERSONAL - ABILITY
Beyond the will to make significant change, most people need to learn new skills, develop clear goals, receive regular feedback and manage emotional impulses to fall back into the old ways.
SOCIAL - MOTIVATION
Harnessing the words and deeds of peers is a proven way to influence someone to change his or her behavior. To change an organization or community, it is the respected and connected opinion leaders that count the most.
SOCIAL - ABILITY
You can simply achieve more when you engage a web of other people to become involved, support and enable your change to occur. As the now famous expression goes, "it takes a village."
STRUCTURAL - MOTIVATION
Definitely not to replace but rather to supplement personal and social strategies, well designed and well timed incentives reward incremental improvement in vital behaviors.
STRUCTURAL - ABILITY
Change the environment to support the change: tools available, layout and design of physical space, work and information flow, proximity of others to the target individual(s), etc.
Why I Like this Book
I like this book because its six strategies are comprehensive. They provide an excellent road map for managers who want to induce change in an individual employee, a unit or, indeed, an entire organization. The authors, however, urge us not to just take the first strategy that seems appropriate and implement that one. Instead, learning from the experience of their influence role models, they suggest that we design a strategy that combines more than one of the six sources of influence.
I like it because their approaches address those classic elements that drive development of an employee-found also in Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership-Commitment (Motivation & Self-Confidence) and Competency (Ability). Whether lack of will or lack of skill/knowledge stands in the way of change, the Influencer model offers a route forward.
And I like Influencer because it emphasizes the central goal of behavior-vital behaviors that need to be changed. At the same time, it reminds us that we humans make choices around behavior based on our assumptions about both current reality and probable consequences. These are what Peter Senge and others have called our "mental maps."
One of the book's chapters is entitled, "Change the Way You Change Minds." The most powerful route to transforming someone's cognitive map and, from this, their behavior is to have them safely, successfully and usually incrementally experience the new behaviors. I am reminded of white knuckle flyers overcoming their aversion to airplanes by first viewing videos about flying and talking about it, then sitting in a plane's cabin at the gate, then experiencing a practice taxi ride on the tarmac and finally taking off and landing.
The book returns frequently to the change heroes' stories for practical examples of how to generate permanent behavior change. For example, at Dr. Silbert's Delancey Street Foundation,
They insist on two vital behaviors: Each resident must (1) take responsibility for someone else and (2)confront anyone about any single violation of the rules. This demand both harnesses the social motivation of peer influence and, when people succeed at Delancey as a result, shows how heretofore undesirable behavior ("ratting" on someone) leads to desirable outcomes for all.
Using structural ability, they purposely house as roommates former members of competing street gangs.
"So What" for Managers
From this book I think managers can learn several practical strategies to change performance-related behavior in their own organization. In a nutshell, here is the recommended approach:
Get clear on the behaviors you want changed or stopped and what vital behaviors you want to see in their place.
Determine to what extent the obstacle to change is lack of motivation and/or lack of skills and knowledge.
In developing your overall plan, consider strategies that draw on the three sources of influence: personal, social support and structural.
When you read this book, you will learn much from the master influencers which were its inspiration.
BOOK REVIEW Influencer the Power to Change Anything By Kerry Patterson et al McGraw Hill 2008 ISBN 9780071484992 - To learn more about this author, visit Ian Cook's Website.
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If you are like me, and like most of the managers we all know, you have a default strategy for influencing people around you. You TELL them what they should do! You SHARE your wisdom and advice, often drawn from experience in similar situations. Your SUGGESTIONS are frequently spot on and brilliant.
There is only one problem, say the authors of this excellent book. This approach rarely works. Why? Because it so often comes across as parental, manipulating, nagging, not their solution, serving someone else's interest, and so forth. All these are sound reasons why people push back and hold on tenaciously to their current behavior.
Master Influencers
The authors claim, however, that there exists a proven array of approaches to influencing new behavior, whether that be of one person or a country's entire population. The writers followed the accomplishments of a number of individuals who have successfully applied influence strategies to problems that others have been trying to solve, in some cases for centuries.
Here are just three of these "master influencers":
Dr. Mimi Silbert whose San Francisco organization, Delancey Street Foundation, runs a number of enterprises (restaurant, repair shop, moving company) that hires convicted felons, homeless persons, lifetime drug addicts, hardened gang members and the like. Of those who join Delancey, less than 10% return to their former life.
Dr. Donald Hopkins of The Carter Center. In 1986 the Center declared war on the Guinea Worm that was infesting the village populations of 20 countries in Africa and southern Asia. Within twenty years their programs reduced the number of cases from 3.5 million to under 10,000.
Dr. Wiwat Rojanapithayakorn in Thailand's Ministry of Public Health between 1989 and 1993 cut the number of new HIV cases by 80%, saving five million Thais from contracting this terrible disease.
Their Approaches
From studying how these and other change geniuses were so successful, it became apparent that the approaches they employed have some things in common.
They first identify the vital behaviors that are at the root of the problem and need to change. This often requires investigating examples of "positive deviance," situations or locations where the problem should exist but doesn't.
They then focus their efforts strategically on changing only these few behaviors. Alter these and the problem topples.
Obviously, the second step is the more difficult one. That said, how did they go about it? Again in common, they tended to work through an array of six sources of influence that, together, respond to two concerns of any individual or group being asked to change their behavior:
Is it worth it to me to change?
Can I do it?
The first of these two concerns refers to the motivation that has to be present in anyone who successfully shifts their behavior. The second speaks to their ability to do it. Six strategies are derived by approaching motivation and ability through three perspectives: personal, social and structural/environmental.
The Six Sources Of Influence
PERSONAL - MOTIVATION
Sometimes the required ("vital") behavior is not seen as pleasant. You need to reframe it in their mind as leading to positive, desirable outcomes.
PERSONAL - ABILITY
Beyond the will to make significant change, most people need to learn new skills, develop clear goals, receive regular feedback and manage emotional impulses to fall back into the old ways.
SOCIAL - MOTIVATION
Harnessing the words and deeds of peers is a proven way to influence someone to change his or her behavior. To change an organization or community, it is the respected and connected opinion leaders that count the most.
SOCIAL - ABILITY
You can simply achieve more when you engage a web of other people to become involved, support and enable your change to occur. As the now famous expression goes, "it takes a village."
STRUCTURAL - MOTIVATION
Definitely not to replace but rather to supplement personal and social strategies, well designed and well timed incentives reward incremental improvement in vital behaviors.
STRUCTURAL - ABILITY
Change the environment to support the change: tools available, layout and design of physical space, work and information flow, proximity of others to the target individual(s), etc.
Why I Like this Book
I like this book because its six strategies are comprehensive. They provide an excellent road map for managers who want to induce change in an individual employee, a unit or, indeed, an entire organization. The authors, however, urge us not to just take the first strategy that seems appropriate and implement that one. Instead, learning from the experience of their influence role models, they suggest that we design a strategy that combines more than one of the six sources of influence.
I like it because their approaches address those classic elements that drive development of an employee-found also in Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership-Commitment (Motivation & Self-Confidence) and Competency (Ability). Whether lack of will or lack of skill/knowledge stands in the way of change, the Influencer model offers a route forward.
And I like Influencer because it emphasizes the central goal of behavior-vital behaviors that need to be changed. At the same time, it reminds us that we humans make choices around behavior based on our assumptions about both current reality and probable consequences. These are what Peter Senge and others have called our "mental maps."
One of the book's chapters is entitled, "Change the Way You Change Minds." The most powerful route to transforming someone's cognitive map and, from this, their behavior is to have them safely, successfully and usually incrementally experience the new behaviors. I am reminded of white knuckle flyers overcoming their aversion to airplanes by first viewing videos about flying and talking about it, then sitting in a plane's cabin at the gate, then experiencing a practice taxi ride on the tarmac and finally taking off and landing.
The book returns frequently to the change heroes' stories for practical examples of how to generate permanent behavior change. For example, at Dr. Silbert's Delancey Street Foundation,
They insist on two vital behaviors: Each resident must (1) take responsibility for someone else and (2)confront anyone about any single violation of the rules. This demand both harnesses the social motivation of peer influence and, when people succeed at Delancey as a result, shows how heretofore undesirable behavior ("ratting" on someone) leads to desirable outcomes for all.
Using structural ability, they purposely house as roommates former members of competing street gangs.
"So What" for Managers
From this book I think managers can learn several practical strategies to change performance-related behavior in their own organization. In a nutshell, here is the recommended approach:
Get clear on the behaviors you want changed or stopped and what vital behaviors you want to see in their place.
Determine to what extent the obstacle to change is lack of motivation and/or lack of skills and knowledge.
In developing your overall plan, consider strategies that draw on the three sources of influence: personal, social support and structural.
When you read this book, you will learn much from the master influencers which were its inspiration.
BOOK REVIEW Influencer the Power to Change Anything By Kerry Patterson et al McGraw Hill 2008 ISBN 9780071484992 - To learn more about this author, visit Ian Cook's Website.
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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