Page 281 - The Power to Change Anything

270 INFLUENCER

immediate supervisor (Social Ability). The supervisor would
begin by forming participants into teams of three. After the
training was complete, the teams met and discussed what they
were doing to catch and solve problems early. They often gath-
ered over lunch, where members helped each other prepare
for an upcoming high-stakes conversation.
Managers provided additional incentive to routinely step up
to and master the vital behaviors by including the target behav-
iors in performance reviews linked to the annual bonus
(Structural Motivation). Employees were now measured against
the skills that were taught in the training. In addition, 25 per-
cent of senior executives’ bonuses were pegged to whether or not
they measurably improved the vital behaviors across the orga-
nization. That put real teeth into the intervention.
Finally, to make good use of the physical environment,
every meeting room displayed a poster that reviewed the skills
employees were supposed to bring into play when they faced
problems with project management (Structural Ability). Leaders
also included a short list of the vital skills at the top of their
printed agenda as a way of reminding themselves to review one
or more elements in each meeting. And then, to make good use
of the power of propinquity, two groups that routinely went at it
hammer-and-tong were moved to the same work area where con-
stant interaction helped them become far more collaborative.
By carefully considering each of the principles we’ve cov-
ered in this book, this particular change team was able to over-
come what had been an overwhelming problem. We know that
they succeeded because we measured the results. By taking a
pre-measure of the vital behaviors and then correlating
improvements in the behavior with key performance indicators,
the research team discovered that not only did the use of vital
behaviors increase substantially, but for each percentage
increase in the use of the vital behaviors, there was a $1.5 mil-
lion improvement in productivity. Quality and customer satis-
faction measures were similarly affected by improvements in