Page 175 - The Power to Change Anything

164 INFLUENCER

it’s always with a doctor or health-care leader who’s enacting
vital behaviors and saving lives. “I learned a long time ago,”
Berwick tells us, “that credit is infinitely divisible. Give it away
every chance you get, and there’s always plenty left for you.”

SUMMARY: SOCIAL SUPPORT
People who are respected and connected can exert an enor-
mous amount of influence over any change effort. Under
stressful and ambiguous circumstances, the mere glance from
what appears to be a respected official can be enough to pro-
pel people to act in ways that are hard to imagine. Fortunately,
this “power of one” can also be used to encourage pro-social
behavior.
When a required behavior is difficult or unpopular or pos-
sibly even questionable, it often takes the support of “the right
one”—an opinion leader—to propel people to embrace an
innovation. Learn how to identify and co-opt these important
people. Ignore opinion leaders at your own peril.
Sometimes change efforts call for changes in widely shared
norms. Almost everyone in a community has to talk openly
about a proposed change in behavior before it can be safely
embraced by anyone. This calls for public discourse. Detractors
will often suggest that it’s inappropriate to hold such an open
discourse, and they may even go so far as to suggest that the
topic is undiscussable. Ignore those who seek silence instead
of healthy dialogue. Make it safe to talk about high-stakes and
controversial topics.
Finally, some change efforts are so profound that they
require the help of everyone involved to enable people to make
the change. When breaking away from habits that are continu-
ally reinforced by a person’s existing social network, people must
be plucked from their support structure and placed in a new net-
work, one where virtually everyone in their new social circle sup-
ports and rewards the right behaviors while punishing the wrong