Page 236 - The Power to Change Anything

Change the Environment 225

or otherwise working with things, the job of leader, parent, or
change agent doesn’t seem like such a daunting task. After all,
these are inanimate objects. Things lie there quietly. Things
never resist change, and they stay put forever once you change
them.
There are two reasons that we don’t make good use of
things as much as we should. The first is the problem we’ve
been discussing. More often than not, powerful elements from
our environment remain invisible to us. Work procedures, job
layouts, reporting structures, etc., don’t exactly walk up and
whisper in our ear. The effect of distance is something we suf-
fer but rarely see. That’s why Fred Steele, a social scientist and
expert on the effects of physical space, suggests that most of us
are “environmentally incompetent.” The environment affects
much of what we do, and yet we often fail to notice its profound
impact.
Second, even when we do think about the impact the envi-
ronment is having on us, we rarely know what to do about it.
It’s not as if we’re carrying around a head full of sociophysical
theories. If someone were to tell us that we need to worry about
Festinger, Schachter, and Lewin’s theory of propinquity (the
impact of space on relationships), we’d think he or she was
pulling our leg. Propinquity? Who’s ever heard of propinquity?
So this is our final test. To complete our influence reper-
toire, we must step up to the challenge and become environ-
mentally competent. To the extent that we (1) remember to
think about things, and (2) are able to come up with theories
of how changing things will change behavior, we’ll have access
to one more powerful set of influence tools.

LEARN TO NOTICE

If it’s true that we rarely notice the impact of the physical envi-
ronment that surrounds us because we simply don’t think to
look at it, it’s time we change. The more we watch for silent