Page 90 - The Power to Change Anything

Make Change Inevitable 79

To better understand how each of these six sources oper-
ates, let’s return to the village in Nigeria where we show up with
visions of annihilating the nasty Guinea worm. We know that
villagers need to enact only three vital behaviors in order to
eliminate the worm. First, people must filter their water. How
hard could that be? Second, should someone still become
infected, he or she must not make contact with the public water
supply until the infection has run its course. Just stay away from
the water. And third, if a neighbor is not filtering water or
becomes infected, the villagers must confront him or her.
Since we know the three behaviors that will eradicate the
Guinea worm, it sounds as if our influence project won’t be
particularly complicated. However, before we start giving
heartfelt speeches and handing out four-color pamphlets, let’s
see how each of the six sources of influence affects this actual
project.
Source 1: Personal Motivation. When the Guinea worm is exit-
ing a victim’s body, the pain is absolutely excruciating. Since
victims can’t merely yank the worm out of their arm or leg with-
out the worm breaking and causing a horrific infection, they’re
forced to wind the parasite around a stick and slowly edge it
out over a couple of weeks—or even a couple of months.
There’s only one source of relief during this prolonged ordeal,
and that’s for victims to soak their painful sores in water. That
means that individuals are personally motivated to do exactly
the opposite of one of the vital behaviors—stay away from the
water. If you don’t deal with personal motivation, your influence
plan will fail.

Source 2: Personal Ability. Many of the villagers don’t know
how to properly filter water. They’ve been trying since General
Gowon left, but the Guinea worm disease is still rampant. When
they take the steps to filter the water, they’ll carelessly slop over
a splash here and a drop there, infecting the water supply and
continuing the infestation. Or they’ll transfer filtered water into