Acronym

Many of the conversations occurring here in San Diego this week will center around human behavior and the challenge of changing it. One of the most effective and least used—at least to its full potential—is the power of influencing people. In fact, just the phrase “influencing people” can call up negative connotations—control freaks, scaremongers, fat-salaried lobbyists, your local bully, etc.

“The fact that many of us don’t realize that it’s our duty to become good at exerting influence causes us a great deal of grief,” writes Joseph Grenny, researcher and co-author of Influencer (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). “Instead of owning up to our responsibility of becoming effective agents of change and then going about the task of improving our influence repertoire (much like an athlete running laps), we grumble, threaten, ridicule, and, more often than not, find ways to cope.”

And it’s the coping thing that’s the kicker. People are just plain better at coping than at influencing, Grenny laments. He points, among other examples, to the poor schools we don’t fix, instead choosing to complain to friends and hire tutors to keep our children challenged.

Most organizations also are better at coping than influencing—and it doesn’t take long to think of examples from our own professional lives where that proved true. But some organizations, such as the nonprofits Grenny cites (Delancey Street Foundation, The Carter Center, several AIDS charities), have finally spurned the expensive media campaigns, celebrity public service announcements, and even education sessions aimed at changing a range of detrimental behaviors and instead done something more radical.

“The breakthrough discovery of most influence geniuses is that enormous influence comes from focusing on just a few vital behaviors. Even the most pervasive problems will often yield to changes in a handful of high-leverage behaviors. Find these, and you’ve found the beginning of influence,” writes Grenny and his research colleagues in Influencer.

So these groups have stepped back, taken a breath, and refocused on identifying the one or two behaviors most responsible for the specific problem. Then, they’ve asked one question: To improve our existing solution, what must people actually do?

“Discover a few vital behaviors, change those, and problems—no matter their size—topple like a house of cards,” they write. Not dozens of behaviors, just a few, they emphasize. I look forward to hearing more about why, if behavioral change can be broken into such simple steps, so many organizations have yet to embrace this approach and solve everything from climate change problems to member apathy.