Page 87 - The Power to Change Anything

76 INFLUENCER

stock through the stratosphere in the 1990s. The training con-
tent might provide a start, but when it comes to creating a cul-
ture of quality, it’ll take a great deal more than a training class.
Ask politicians what they’re doing to fight crime, and they’ll tell
you that they’re working hard to secure harsher sentences for
felony convictions. Also not enough to have much of an
impact. Ask community leaders what steps they’re taking to
stem the growing plight of childhood obesity, and they’ll sing
the praises of their latest pet project—removing candy
machines from schools.
And let’s be honest. How many of us haven’t yearned for a
quick fix for our own problems? A miracle diet pill, a magical
marriage solution, or a $500 set of DVDs that promises finan-
cial freedom. Just give us that one thing, and we’re ready to roll.
But it takes a combination of strategies aimed at a handful
of vital behaviors to solve profound and persistent problems. In
fact, this is the core principle demonstrated by virtually all
the change masters we studied. No single strategy explained
their success. In fact, it became quite evident that individuals
who succeed where others have routinely failed overdetermine
success—that is, they bring more influence strategies into play
than they might assume would be the minimum required for
success. They leave nothing to chance.
This could sound discouraging. In Chapter 2 we shared the
good news that it often takes only a few vital behaviors, routinely
enacted, to bring about massive and lasting changes. Now we’re
adding the idea that, while you need to affect only a few behav-
iors, behind each you’ll uncover a number of forces that either
encourage or discourage the right action and an equal number
of forces that either enable or block the correct behavior. Ignore
these varied and sundry forces at your own peril.
Fortunately there’s additional good news. We now know
enough about the forces that affect human behavior to place
them into a coherent and workable model that can be used to
organize our thinking, select a full set of influence strategies,