Page 265 - The Power to Change Anything

254 INFLUENCER

gies have been put into place to help each resident transform
from a habitual offender into a productive citizen.
Naturally, bringing about the profound transformation of
these 500 people isn’t easy. It’s never easy to get people to
change deeply entrenched behaviors, and when you’re work-
ing with people whose résumés include an average of four
felony convictions, you’re dealing with a population that has
one unhelpful characteristic in common. The residents may
come from different gangs, ethnic groups, or even criminal
portfolios, but they have all failed to turn their lives around.
Before joining Delancey, each time these criminals matric-
ulated into the penal system only to return to a life of crime,
the penal system failed them. Each time some may have sworn
to their family members that next time they’d get it right—and
then got it wrong—they let down their loved ones. Each time
some may have vowed to break their vile habits and promptly
returned to their old ways, they let themselves down. And each
time they failed to transform into a new person, they failed
because not one of them brought together a comprehensive
enough influence strategy to remake themselves.
All 500 of them had repeatedly failed before showing up at
Delancey Street.
Yet Dr. Mimi Silbert’s approach routinely transforms 90 per-
cent of these habitual failures into law-abiding citizens. Dr.
Silbert succeeds more than others not because she cares more
than other change agents or because she spends more money.
In fact, the operation funds itself through its own efforts. To date,
Silbert has succeeded in turning around over 14,000 lives
because she is a genuine card-carrying, four-star influencer. She
knows how to help people change their thoughts and actions.
In 1992 when Dr. Don Berwick and IHI started the 100,000
lives campaign, they too were taking on one of the most
entrenched establishments in the world—the U.S. health-care
system. At that particular time in history, an estimated 100,000
patients were dying each year in hospitals as the direct result