Page 17 - The Power to Change Anything

6 INFLUENCER

bring about improvements. That means we don’t offer influ-
ence methods that apply only to specific problems such as:
“How to potty-train your Chihuahua” or “Six ways to motivate
left-handed coal miners.” Instead we look for high-leverage
strategies and skills that can be applied across the vast array of
human challenges.
For example, consider the following ongoing tragedy. Every
year over 3,000 Americans drown—many of them in public
pools. This ugly statistic remained unchanged until a team of
tenacious leaders from the YMCA and Redwoods Insurance
decided to abandon serenity and search for a workable change
strategy. It wasn’t long before they reduced fatal accidents at
YMCA pools by two-thirds simply by employing a few of the
influence strategies we’re about to study.
To reduce the senseless loss of lives, the team found a way
to encourage YMCA lifeguards to alter how they performed
their job. Now that’s no easy challenge because it requires the
ability to exert influence over hundreds of teenage employees
across the organization. However, when it came to guarding,
the team discovered that one vital behavior—something they
called “10/10 scanning”—was a key to saving lives. By using a
few of the principles we cover in this book, they were able to
zero in on and change a key behavior.
It turns out that traditional lifeguards spend much of their
time greeting members, adjusting swim lanes, picking up kick-
boards, or testing pool chemicals. However, when lifeguards
stand in a specific spot and scan their section of the pool every
10 seconds and then offer assistance to anyone in trouble
within 10 seconds, drowning rates drop by two-thirds. To date,
scores of communities have been spared the devastating loss of
a life because a handful of clever influencers looked for a way
to change behavior rather than accepting the existing reality.
And while we’re talking about saving lives, let’s take a look
at an influence effort that has saved—and created—tens of
thousands of jobs. In 2006 alone (during the writing of this