| |
By John Bourke
In our last issue, I introduced you to some preliminary concepts from
the newest VitalSmarts book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything.
Influencer follows in the same tradition of acclaim as its predecessors,
Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations.
When it comes to the persistent, nagging problems that afflict you at
home, at work, in your community and beyond, your world is perfectly
organized to create the behavior you’re currently experiencing. Any
problem in which a sustainable solution is desired must draw insight
from multiple sources of influence to help “overdetermine success.”
Sustainable change demands a multifaceted strategy that both motivates
and enables key stakeholders to become influential collaborators for a
preferred future.
Last time, I asked you to think of a problem that you’re currently
trying to solve. As you select the problem, avoid the tendency to select
a situation in which merely persuading another person to make a
different choice is all that’s required (for example, persuading a
superior to approve funding for a new IT expenditure). Instead select a
situation in which you need people to change long-standing behaviors
that are kept in place by a variety of influential factors (for example,
influencing the entire spectrum of stakeholders to improve the on-time
delivery of IT projects).
In this first edition of our two-part series, we explored four of the
eight considerations savvy leaders use when creating an influence plan
to garner sustainable change. In this article, we will address the final
four considerations. With your influence challenge in mind, answer the
following categories of questions.
5. Harness Peer Pressure
When it comes to social support, do you
identify people who will be most concerned about or resistant to the
changes and make sure you involve them early — and then either get them
on board or at least eliminate their resistance? Do you carefully
identify opinion leaders and create a specific strategy to get them
involved in encouraging others to make the needed changes? Do you make
sure that people in positions of authority teach, model, praise and
coach people toward the new behavior (even if the new and healthier
behavior may run up against a long-held but unhealthy norm)?
6. Find Strength in Numbers
When it comes to providing social capital,
do you make sure that others have justin- time assistance whenever they
run into roadblocks trying out the new behaviors? Do you identify the
toughest obstacles to change and make sure that people have others
around them to call on whenever they need help or assistance? Do you
create safe ways for people to get help without feeling embarrassed or
being put on the spot? Do you provide everyone with the authority they
need to step up to new behaviors without fear of being sanctioned?
Finally, do you make sure that everyone willingly shares any information
necessary to support the change?
7. Design Rewards and Demand Accountability
When it comes to providing
incentives, do you avoid resorting first to incentives when trying to
influence new behavior, ensuring that people buy into the moral,
personal, business or other reasons behavior needs to change? (Only then
do I work on other kinds of incentives.) Do you use sound judgment when
adjusting rewards (allowance, pay, performance appraisal, bonuses, etc.)
to make sure people have clear and immediate incentives to adopt the new
behaviors? Do you take care to make judicious use of small yet
thoughtful rewards that are more symbolic and meaningful than a cash
incentive? Do you make sure that any incentives you use are tied
directly to the behaviors that matter and not to less important actions
that don’t add much to desired results? Do you make sure people feel
motivated along the way by providing them with incentives for small
improvements (especially when the change initiative takes a long time)?
8. Change the Environment
When it comes to using the environment, do you
use reminders, regular communications and metrics to keep the need for
change visible and top of mind for everyone who needs to change their
behavior? Do you make sure that information about progress toward our
change objective is accurate, timely and visible? Do you move things
around — even changing work space or where items are stored, etc. — in
order to remove physical obstacles and to make the new behaviors
convenient and easy? Do you reorganize things where possible to make old
and less desirable habits hard or impossible to continue? Where
possible, do you change the physical environment (moving people or
things closer together)?
Everyone wants to be an influencer. We all want to learn how to help
ourselves and others change behavior. And yet, despite our repeated
attempts to do everything from improving quality to increasing
productivity at work, few of us have more than one or two ideas about
how to exert influence and achieve real change.
The eight areas that we have explored have been utilized by hundreds of
successful influencers over time. Although the approach has been
validated across five decades of social science research, these powerful
principles for changing behaviors can be applied by anyone regardless of
the focus of the change initiative. A thorough review of the Influencer
text will teach you how to: • Apply powerful strategies for changing
both thoughts and actions.
• Identify the vital behaviors that lead to dramatic improvements in
results.
• Harness the power of peer pressure, opinion leaders and other social
forces.
• Enable others through leveraging the invisible power of the
environment.
• Bypass ineffective verbal efforts in favor of powerful experiences
that change minds.
• Marshal six sources of influence to make change inevitable.
Simply put, you can learn how to solve the problems you care about most
— from the simplest to the most persistent, resistant and profound
challenges you can
imagine.
fm
John
Bourke is a frequent contributor to industry and association
publications and a popular keynote speaker on the topics of leadership,
influence, strategy, performance improvement and culture change. He is
an established consultant and key player in several world-shaping
initiatives. John designed and facilitated the country’s first community
forum for Colin Powell’s America’s Promise from the Presidents’ Summit
for America’s Future. These efforts helped to mobilize citizens from all
walks of life to fulfill five promises to our children: caring adults,
safe places, a healthy start, marketable skills and opportunities to
serve.
Recently, John partnered with Bono and the Board of Directors of DATA
(the philanthropic organization founded by Bono to eradicate the root
causes of African poverty) to design and facilitate their global
strategic planning process. He also continues to provide coaching and
management development for their rapidly growing organization. Bono’s
commitment to Africa was recently featured in Time magazine’s Man of the
Year issue.
John is also principal associate with VitalSmarts, distributor of
Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confron - tations and Influencer
Training, Certification and Licensing. Over the years, he has taught
thousands of leaders in hundreds of midsize to Fortune 100 corporations,
and has designed and delivered major organizational improvement and
strategic planning initiatives for IAAM World headquarters,
Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex, Allen County War Memorial
Coliseum and other corporations wanting to distinguish themselves as
“best in class.” He has authored numerous articles in the areas of
personal, executive and organizational effectiveness.
|
|
Back to Facility Manager
Contents
