Page 184 - The Power to Change Anything
P. 184
Find Strength in Numbers 173
Tanika the starting cash she needed in neighboring India was
formed as a direct result of Dr. Yunus’s work.
What makes this story even more remarkable is that Dr.
Yunus’s methods not only helped Tanika, but her four friends
also opened small businesses and succeeded—as do 39 out of
every 40 people that Dr. Yunus helps. That’s correct—98 per-
cent of the people to whom Yunus loans money enact the sec-
ond vital behavior for moving themselves out of abject poverty:
They pay back their loans with full interest.
The majority of these successful business owners move their
families out of poverty. They educate their children, and by
now many of these children have earned advanced degrees.
Once-starving villagers who at one time earned two cents for
a day’s hard labor now run profitable businesses while their
children attend universities.
As inspiring as this story is, the key takeaway lies in learn-
ing how Yunus was able to ensure that his poverty-stricken
clients were able to enact the vital behaviors that led to suc-
cess. What influence magic does he work to ensure that non-
collateralized loans are paid back over 98 percent of the
time? Equally important, which strategies can you and I put
into place as still another powerful tool in our influence
repertoire?
As is the case with any complex intervention that claims to
change people with long histories of painful failures, Dr. Yunus
makes use of virtually every method we mention in this book.
His task is too large to rely on a single influence tool, so he uses
them all. Nevertheless, by watching Tanika and her colleagues
in action, we can focus on yet another high-leverage influence
tool—the power of social capital.
Dr. Yunus didn’t merely ask Tanika to submit a business plan
that he would review. He demanded that she form a team with
four of her neighbors, each of whom would submit plans of their
own. Each person from the team would eventually be granted
a loan. And with the granting of a loan, each of the other four