Page 241 - The Power to Change Anything

230 INFLUENCER

And what could be more invisible than the nasty little microor-
ganisms that cause disease?
This particular problem of invisibility called for some
minor theatrics. At a routine meeting of senior physicians,
Rekha Murthy, the hospital’s epidemiologist, handed each
physician a petri dish coated with a spongy layer of agar. “I
would love to culture your hand,” Murthy told them while
inviting each to press his or her palm onto the squishy medium.
Murthy then collected the dishes and sent them to the lab for
culturing and photographing.
When the photos came back from the lab, the images were
frightfully effective. Doctors who had thought their hands were
pristine when they submitted to the agar test were provided
photo evidence of the horrific number of bacteria they rou-
tinely transported to their patients. Some of the more colorful
photos of the bacterial colonies the lab had grown became pop-
ular screen savers in the hospital.
When it came to changing physicians’ behavior, photos cre-
ated poignant vicarious experiences and visual cues that
reminded them of the need to properly wash their hands.
Doctors didn’t see their germs causing diseases, but they saw
the next best thing. They saw whole colonies of the ugly
micronatives they were hosting in their own fingerprints. After
a few more opinion leaders were brought “face to colony” with
the effects of their own inadequate hand hygiene, the hospital
moved to nearly 100 percent compliance—and it stuck.

MIND THE DATA STREAM

The influence masters we just cited had one strategy in com-
mon: They affected how information found its way from the
dark nooks and crannies of the unknown into the light of day.
By providing small cues in the environment, they drew atten-
tion to critical data points, and they changed how people
thought and eventually how they behaved. Since in these cases