The 3 Ps for influencing change
‘How can we, as individuals, be more effective change agents?’ This was the question asked at a recent Forum for the Future network event. My advice – based on 20 years influencing Ministers, NGO leaders and Business Chief Executives – was to think about the ‘three Ps’: power; psychology; persistence.
Power. You need to know where power lies, who has it and how they can wield it to your ends. Power is usually found at the top of organisations, but it can reside in other places too: some companies are very R&D design-led; others have their heart in marketing; while others still look mainly at the numbers. And if you hit a block when trying to persuade those with power, don’t give up. Instead expand the context. Ask who they will be influenced by, how you can out-number or work round them.
Psychology. How will the change you are proposing feel to the individual or audience you want to influence? Most people are not entirely motivated by doing the right thing. Whether they like it or not, they have baser human needs like status and security. They’ll be asking themselves: ‘How does this make me look?’ and ‘Does this threaten or enhance my position?’ So, being right, having the facts and winning the arguments are not enough if you haven’t made them feel ownership of the idea. I love Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aphorism that “There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn't matter who gets the credit.”
Persistence. If you want to change something, you have to stick with it and stay the course. Otherwise the forces of reaction will mass and your early victory will soon turn to a loss – and you may even end up in a worse position than previously. And we know from the Harvard Business Review studies that most organisational change initiatives fail, and they fail because people don’t work through the implementation properly. As they say. “Ambition is the path to success, persistence is the vehicle you arrive in”.
So, when you’re trying to change something, remember your three Ps.
Comments
From our work with training people on the very fringe of the sustainability message , we would add
Engage: open discussion across a group allowing different views, barriers and opportunities to be explored engages people in the sustainability journey and they feel they can play a role, how ever small. one sustainability leader link this to "Solution Mode"
Educate: place their views within the context of the global and local perspective , and using a psychology technique of discovery interviewing where people discover knowledge/connections for themselves and from each other, with a facilitator acting as a guide. I am always amazed & enthused how/when the penny drops in these sessions.
Empower: we give provide bit size chunks so they can achieve a small step change. Some planned behaviour research suggests that if people feel their actions will led to a successful outcome they are more likely to change their behaviour. In other words, they feel they can achieve something as sustainability challenge is often overwhelming
Just some feedback from our experiences.
"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still" Dale Carnegie.
People tend to do things because they think it is the right thing to do within the available circumstances so in addition to trying to understand where people are coming from (the psychology section, above) you need to think about the consequence of the organisational rules. Rules function according to a shared imagination of how they should be interpreted and understanding what that is is key.
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