My notes from reading the book “Influencer”

Search for vital behaviors

• Search for *behaviors*
• Search for *vital* behaviors
• Find some *recovery* behaviors
• Test your results

Changing minds

• Convince people
  • That they *can* do it
  • That it will be *worth it*
• Don’t rely on verbal persuasion
• Guide them through actually doing it, or
• Arrange a field trip – a real experience, or
• Create vicarious experiences – a well-told story
  • Tell the whole story, don’t summarize
  • Clearly link current behaviors to bad results
  • Include new behaviors and link to better results
  • Deal with both “can I do it” and “is it worth it”

Six domains of influence strategy and tactics

Personal motivation: Make the undesirable desirable

• Help people get intrinsic satisfaction from right behavior
• Make wrong behavior cause displeasure
• Sense of accomplishment in result
• Tap into pride and competitiveness
• Longer term – tap into people’s view of who they want to be
• When good acts aren’t satisfying (or bad ones are)
  • Take focus off the activity and connect it with *values*
  • Talk openly about values
• If bad acts are entrenched
  • Reconnect actions to sense of morality
  • Fight moral disengagement
  • Don’t let people minimize or justify
• For really resistant people
  • Don’t try to convince – *ask* them what *they* want
  • Allow them to discover links between actions and values

Personal ability: Surpass your limits

• Demand higher achievement levels
  • Set aside time to study and practice vital behaviors
  • Pay attention to clear, specific, repeatable actions
  • Seek outside help and coaching
  • Insist on immediate feedback against clear standards
  • Break tasks into discrete actions, with goals for each
  • Practice in a low-risk environment
  • Apply “practice” tactics to all skills
  • Physical, intellectual, even complex emotional/social ones
• Two of your mind’s most important systems
  • The “Go” system – instinctive, quick, emotional demands
    • Useful for legitimate risks to life and limb, less useful other times
  • The “Know” system – intellectual, thorough, slow
  • To regain control from the “Go” system
    • Create distractions for yourself
    • Avoid the battle: make the difficult easy, the averse pleasant, and the boring interesting
    • When strong emotions take over because you have drawn harsh negative conclusions
      • Reappraise the situation
      • Ask yourself complex questions that demand intellect and frontal lobe rather than emotional/amygdala
• Good news: overcoming habits and developing complex skills can be done with deliberate practice and ability to manage your own emotions, both of which can be learned.

Social motivation: Harnessing peer pressure

• People who are *respected* and *connected* exert great influence
• Identify and co-opt opinion leaders
  • Ignore them at your peril
• Problems that require changes to widely-held norms
  • Almost everyone has to talk openly about controversial subjects
  • Topic may be considered undiscussable
  • Make it safe to talk about controversial subjects
• Some efforts are so profound, people must be plucked from the old environment and immersed in a new one
• Everyone desires to be
  • Accepted
  • Respected
  • Connected

Social ability: find strength in numbers

• The world is interdependent
  • Inability to work in concert is a handicap
  • We need to build social capital
  • Popular/media message of “rugged individualism” is wrong
• Consider what people need when facing daunting, risky change
  • Help, authority, consent, cooperation
• Develop and influence strategy that offers social capital

Structural motivation: Design rewards, demand accountability

• Administering rewards can be tricky–use *third* not first
  • 1st – Personal motivators
  • 2nd – Social motivators
  • 3rd – Extrinsic rewards
• If you choose extrinsic rewards
  • Make them immediate
  • Link to vital *actions*, not results
• Less is more
  • Small, heart-felt tokens of appreciation
  • Almost like an extension of social approval
• If you have to administer punishment
  • Take a shot across the bow first

Structural ability: Change the environment

• Make data obvious, accessible and clear
• Location, location, location
• Make it easy – make it unavoidable