Page 267 - The Power to Change Anything
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256 INFLUENCER
schedule to completely eradicate the scourge by 2009. Team
members have done this not through a medical breakthrough
but by learning how to motivate and enable absolute strangers
to alter their behavior. Like other influencers we’ve studied,
these devoted change agents stepped up to an enormous chal-
lenge, left behind old and failed methods, and decided that if
they wanted to solve the devastating Guinea worm problem,
they would have to start with themselves. They would first have
to learn what it would take to exert influence over human
behavior.
So they did. They visited their target audience, studied pos-
itive deviance, and brought into play many of the methods we
describe in this book. As a result, one day soon the very last
Guinea worm will have been eliminated from the face of the
earth. Forever. The horrible parasite will actually be extinct,
and this is an extinction we can live with.
Bandura, Silbert, Berwick, Hopkins—in fact, all of the
other practitioners and scholars we’ve studied—have made
stunning contributions to the change literature. They have all
succeeded where others have failed. They have all demon-
strated that if you know how to make use of the right influence
tools and bring them to bear on a carefully designed project,
you can change anything.
And best of all, each of these geniuses has given us
hope. We too can become master influencers—but not with-
out some hard work. We have to stop tinkering with problems
and learn how to build a comprehensive influence strategy.
This, of course, raises the question of whether everyday
people can actually put into play the principles influence
masters use all the time. The answer, of course, is a resound-
ing yes. None of the individuals we’ve studied were influencers
by training, but all eventually learned what it took to wrestle
persistent problems to the ground. To kick-start your personal
efforts, you’ll have to use this book as a handbook for change.