[Music] Mimi filbert isn't interested in you unless you're kind of like this guy here unless you had an average of 16 felony convictions that's who she wants she's not interested in you unless you've been addicted to harmful substances for ten years or longer about two-thirds of her her applicants have have been homeless for large stretches of time functionally illiterate she describes her ideal applicant as greedy racist and violent now what I want you to know about Meany is that she's worked with over 14 thousand people like I've just described over the past 30 years and has a 91 percent success rate in helping them turn their lives around forever and you know what Delancey Street consists of me me and them that's it there's no staff no therapists there are no guards it's me me so Burt and a brilliant influence strategy so we wondered how does somebody like Mimi Silbert even think about her influence strategy how did she do this so we traveled to San Francisco we spent time trying to study how she thinks about this and what she does and what we found is that there's remarkable consistency across every one of these practitioners we found that these principles don't just work in these kinds of social problem areas they work in a corporate setting over the past 25 years we've used precisely these same principles and skills to produce change like that that you see Mike Miller achieved here 93% reduction in defects profound improvements in productivity 20 million dollars in cost saves solely by influencing the behavior of 1,400 IT professionals at Sprint here's the thing I want you to know about Mike Miller this remarkable culture change happened over a period of four months the reason you need to know that is because people in my field have been doing doing people like you an enormous disservice for the past thirty years we've been telling leaders like you that changing the culture of an organization frequently takes ten years you know 20 years ladies and gentlemen what I want to tell you after the travel and the research that we've done is but that's the kind of argument you make when you're incompetent if you don't know how to do it you just ask for more time and more budget when you know how to do it you're able to produce change in fairly short order so that's we're going to discuss today how do people like this think about influence so if you want to take your little note cards out here's a model we found that there are three principles that explain the success of every one of these effective influencers I'm going to cover two of them for you one of them just very lightly here the first is this the first principle is what we call the principle of vital behaviors your first challenge when attempting to influence change is to identify what we call vital behaviors here's what we know two big insights the first thing is the best way to improve results frequently is not to focus on results it's to focus on behaviors the behaviors that affect those results so many of you when you're starting to take apart the guinea worm problem start in by saying well could we dig wells could we change the water supply could we do this or that what we don't do is stop and say what are the behaviors in the village that are creating the problem to begin with that's your first task the second important point that I want you to get from this to this finding is that even with very complicated and very long-standing problems frequently just a few behaviors can lead to profound changes in results so that's your goal so let me get you back with your partner real quick I'm going to give you 60 seconds on this if you had to identify just a couple of behaviors you change in a village what would they be to eradicate the guinea worm what would just a couple of behaviors be if you were done Hopkins 60 seconds go for it alright let me pause via in the process there so Haller went out who's got one raise your hand if you have a saw what's one behavior you'd work on yeah excellent good so this one this one's fairly clear when somebody is infected and a guinea worm is starting to do its thing right if we could get them to stop going where to the water supply that would be a very vital behavior because that cuts off the opportunity right of the worm to perpetuate itself what's one more raise your hand if he I'm gonna pot yeah good good he says boil the water before they use it now one thing you have to know about these villages is often they don't have a lot of firewood and so boiling might not be the strategy but the principle here is what try to clean the water somehow right whatever is the best way for us to do this so here's what Don Hopkins found they went into the villages and they said what are the behaviors that happen in villages that don't have guinea worm and they found that there were three now what I want you to notice is as Don Hopkins starts this influence process what he doesn't do is what you and I typically do well you and I typically do when we begin to try to influence change as we start by just setting vague goals right set some high-level goal like let's get rid of the infections in our village and then we sort of just walk away from it well often just transmit these goals through an organization but without a real thought to what are the behaviors we need to change ii will often advocate vague values you know let's have teamwork here let's do that let's have trust integrity and communication in our organization it turns out if that's your influence strategy that it doesn't lead to much change and finally will sort of lead out with strategies let's issue pamphlets like put signs up in the village let's hand out filter cloths or whatever it is and what we know is the first step is to identify vital behaviors they found three filter water don't put your infected lemon water and number one hold other people accountable to filter their water and not put their infected limbs in water now does this work in organizations we know that leaders in organizations struggle with their equivalent of the guinea worm we can't watch projects on time things go over budget we have all sorts of issues that persist after year after year my question to you is what kinds of behaviors happen in your organization that keep these problems happening what I want you to do is just take 60 seconds and ask yourself the question what are some of the behaviors that happen in your organization that caused projects to not hit their budget not hit their schedule not get the quality thing what are some of the common behaviors that you see in witness 60-seconds just brainstorm from your experience all right so this is how the process works you start by saying if we have chronic problems delivering results on-time and on-budget what are some of the common behaviors that create the problems now we did a worldwide study asking this question and found there are three kinds of behaviors that happen regularly let me see if they happen in your organization as well that set you up for failure in a project the first we call fact free planning ever seen that one so we get together at the beginning of the project and set above the budget and a deadline with no consideration for reality you ever seen that happen yeah sets us up for failure second AWOL sponsors executive sponsors don't show up for meetings don't do what they're supposed to don't follow up you ever seen that happen they set you up for failure and finally project chicken this is where bad news gets suppressed everybody knows it isn't working but nobody says a word these behaviors happen and we know that the project will fail so task one is to identify these vital behaviors what are the few behaviors that create the most amount of problems if I'm trying to get off drugs if I'm trying to quit smoking if I'm trying to lose weight frequently there just a few behaviors at a few times of the day or a few times of the week that create most of the problems I've got that's your first task your second task if you take a look at the model moving to the left is to create an influencer strategy to help people change these behaviors how do we do that well let me start off with a little test for us this is really really important so if you take out a piece of paper and ask you to write down the first three things that come into your head when I describe this influencer problem so we know that in hospitals across the United States that tens of thousands of people will get infected this year by health care workers who fail to do what wash their hands that's a vital behavior we know that's one very vital behavior that would make a big difference if we could get everybody doing it you know what the compliance rate is in the average American Hospital for hand-washing anybody guess yeah yeah it would be nice if it were in the 70s or 80s the compliance rate in many hospitals is in the 30% range this awful now I'm not trying to throw rocks at our hospitals because we all have the same issues they just create bigger problems and more immediate problems in hospitals in other places but think about this for a minute the next time you're laying in a hospital bed and a healthcare worker approaches you with outstretched hands what should you assume yeah what should you say yeah in fact I'm going to do it for you all right escort them over to the sink so we know that the compliance rate is fairly low I was at one of the finest teaching hospitals in the United States about a year and a half ago talking to the vice president of quality and she said we struggle with this in our hospital I said I'm sorry to hear that a wonderful institution she said in fact you know the worst offender is here I said who she said the worst offender is our chief of staff she said our chief of staff will go on Grand Rounds every day with all sorts of residents following after him and and he will never wash his hands he'll go from patient to patient to patient touching this chart and that patient coughing into his hand and then going to the next one end and never wash his hands on your piece of paper I'd like you to write down the first three answers that come into your mind to the question of why why is this guy not washing his hands write him down three answers why would he not be washing his hands all right okay now I want you to hang on to that list because here's what I'm going to tell you about your list the quality of that list determines the level of your influence what you just did is something you and I almost never do before we start trying to influence change what we almost never do is stop and ask the question why are people doing what they're doing today we know what we want to get them to do we start trying to kick them in the pants to get them to do it but we never stop and ask the question why are they doing what they're doing today your capacity to answer that question predicts the level of your influence the degree to which we are capable of answering that in a thorough and effective way is the degree to which we can create influence strategies that truly work how many of you on your list at least somewhere had that he's doing it because he's an arrogant rule-breaking sob how many of you had that somewhere on your list yeah most of us do how many of you had some version of because he's lazy or doesn't care how many we had a little bit of that and now here's what we do so what we tend to do when we're trying to understand people's behaviors we jump right to they don't care they're not motivated it's the kind of person they are why can't I stick with my diet because I just don't have the gumption the self-discipline right that's the problem it's in me somewhere now that could be part of the problem it could could very well be part of it but here's what you're at risk for if that's what you focus on you and I tend to live in a world that wants those kinds of quick easy answers it's just lazy people it's just people that don't care we want silver bullets we want some magic answer just train everybody and then they'll change right just change your incentive plan and then everybody's behavior will change in the organization if this is the way we create our influence strategies we fail this is why our failure rates are so high so let me give you a challenge I would argue that unless and until you know how the following statement is true you'll fail at influencing change unless and until you have a thorough and effective answer to that statement you will never succeed to change unless and until you know how the world is perfectly organized to keep me from losing weight to keep me from quitting smoking to people from washing their hands the way they should unless until you know how you've designed unwittingly usually unintentionally using a world that is fighting against the behavior you'd like to have you will be ineffective at creating change here's what we know we know that there are six different sources of influence that you've got to pull together to help people change persistent and resistant behavior so keep that list going and as we go through these what I want you to do is see how many we're missing on your list how many more we could learn about that would expand our influence repertoire here's the basic principle the principle is that there is not one cause for a most persistent behavior there's a conspiracy and as we all know best way to fight a conspiracy is with a foil hat right or perhaps with a better influence strategy a broader repertoire if you want to influence persistent behavior you're going to have to draw on many sources of influence simultaneously here's the promise influencers succeed or the rest of us fail because they do that influencer succeed where the rest of us fail because they over determine success they Marshall four or more of these sources of influence simultaneously to overwhelm the bad behavior and help it to change that's what you've got to learn to do so let's talk about them real quick here's the first how many of you have ever stood in front of a refrigerator door wishing you had the will to not eat something you're staring at have you ever had that happen before how many of you have ever brought home a half a piece of chocolate cake from the restaurant the night before put it into the refrigerator and thought about it all day long you ever done that I mean you know you're a certified chocoholic when you're conscious of it and you're texting your kids to make sure they don't eat it before you get home that day that's the definition of a chocoholic you're standing in front of the refrigerator door knowing you shouldn't and the problem you're up against is the influence of the pain or pleasure of the behavior itself eating chocolate is pleasurable that's why I do it not eating chocolate is painful that's why I don't do that right not putting my leg in the water when a guinea worm is coming out is painful and that's why I don't want to do that washing my hands a hundred times a day is annoying distracting boring so the problem you're up against as an influencer that we all know is many positive behaviors many vital behaviors are boring frightening uncomfortable sometimes even painful the flip side of that is many bad behaviors feel kind of good so if I'm your list somewhere you had that one you know doesn't want to wash his hands because it's just too much trouble and he's lazy and all that check the box you got it but let's move on