Page 213 - The Power to Change Anything

202 INFLUENCER

Consider the work of Muhammad Yunus, “banker to the
poor.” When Dr. Yunus began to create a financial institution
to administer loans to the working poor of Bangladesh, he dis-
covered that some of the best young bank officers (who were
often required to go door to door and meet with people living
in the humblest of conditions) were former revolutionaries who
had once fought to overthrow the government. Many put down
their guns and picked up clipboards as they learned that they
were able to effect more change through administering
microloans than they could ever hope to achieve through vio-
lent means.
If you’ve ever visited any of the settings where these young
people have worked their magic, you can’t help but be
impressed with the nobility of their work. Villagers who had
once lived on the edge of starvation—whose children were
often born with severe handicaps resulting from the arsenic
found in the unfiltered water, and who often died at a young
age—now run small businesses. They also rear healthy children
who, for the first time in their family’s history, attend school.
Given the enormous intrinsic and social benefits associated
with their jobs, what could possibly provide additional incen-
tive to these erstwhile revolutionaries? Earning a gold star. An
executive discovered this surprising fact almost by accident. To
ensure that local branches were focusing on the right goals, one
of the regional managers instituted a program where branches
of Dr. Yunus’s bank earned different-colored stars for achiev-
ing mission-central results—one color for hitting a certain
number of loans, another for registering all the borrower’s
children in school, another for hitting profit goals, and so forth.
Soon it became the goal of every manager to become a five-
star branch. Individuals who were doing some of the most
socially important work on the planet—and already working
diligently and with focus—kicked their efforts to a new level
when faced with the opportunity of earning colored stars. Of
course, there was nothing of tangible value in these ten-a-penny