Dear Crucial Skills,

I read about your career-limiting habits survey and immediately realized a career-limiting habit has held me back from a promotion I’ve wanted for several years. You could say I have two of them. First, I have the one you describe as “short-term focus.” I focus on urgent tasks and let some of the long-term priorities slide. Second, I sometimes get caught in the “too little too late” trap—I’ve procrastinated on a long-term priority, and now I take shortcuts or miss deadlines.

I want this year to be the year I finally meet my goal. Do you have any advice for overcoming my career-limiting habits so I can finally get the promotion I’ve been working so hard to earn?

Career-Limited

 Dear Career-Limited,

Congratulations on seeing yourself with such steely-eyed objectivity. Most of us have trouble recognizing our faults, but the career-limiting habits you’ve recognized put you in great company. They are among the most common career-limiting habits we see in workplaces. The good news is that you can overcome them.

I’ll suggest some ways to make progress on habits in general, and on yours in particular.

Escape the Willpower Trap. The most common mistake we make is to rely too much on willpower alone. Of course, willpower is important. If you aren’t determined and resolute in your desire to improve, then you won’t. However, while willpower may be the spark to get you started, it won’t be enough to carry you through the dog days of change.

The problem is that your status quo, your career-limiting habit, is held in place by several of the six sources of influence, and you may not even see them. Here are a few that might keep you working on short-term tasks instead of focusing on long-term priorities:

Source 1: Love What You Hate. It’s personally satisfying to take a job to its completion. This is more possible with short-term tasks than with long-term priorities.
Source 2: Do What You Can’t. It’s difficult to say “no” to some short-term tasks. You may need to master this new skill.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices Into Friends. Your manager and others probably rely on you because you deliver on short-term tasks. They may push you to keep your short-term focus. Others may also be more willing to help on short-term tasks because the commitment is smaller.
Source 5: Invert the Economy. The rewards for completing short-term tasks are immediate; the punishments for missing long-term priorities are in the future.
Source 6: Control Your Space. Technology is constantly reminding you of your short-term tasks. For example, most instant messages, e-mails, and phone calls focus on short-term projects.

Instead of just trying harder, take control of these sources of influence. Get them pulling for you, instead of against you.

Be the scientist and the subject. Setbacks are as predictable as death and taxes. You will experience them. Your success will be determined by how you respond to them. People who are caught in the Willpower Trap respond by blaming themselves—their character, their steadfastness, and their ability to “stick to it.”

Successful changers respond as scientists would—with curiosity instead of blame. Instead of blaming themselves, they treat their setbacks as data—they use them to examine and improve their plan. We call it “turning bad days into good data.”

Here’s how you can use your setbacks as good data. When you realize you’ve slipped back into your habit, stop and ask yourself when, where, and how it happened. Find the crucial moment—the circumstances—that led to your slip up. One of my crucial moments is when I tell myself a clever story—a story that lets me off the hook for acting on my bad habit. Once you find these crucial moments, decide how to handle them. I often need to change my clever story to one that’s less clever, but more true.

Use all six sources of influence. We’ve collected data on the tactics people use to overcome career-limiting habits. The biggest mistake people make is to rely on willpower alone or in combination with just one or two other tactics. People who combined tactics from four or more of the six sources of influence were up to ten times more likely to get rid of bad habits and improve their chances of advancement.

Here are a few tactics the people we surveyed use to help them overcome career-limiting habits:

Source 1: Love What You Hate. Focus on the positive things that could happen if you change your bad habit, or focus on the bad things that could happen if you don’t change.
Source 2: Do What You Can’t. Skill up by reading books, articles, searching the internet, etc., then practice these better skills until they become your new habits.
Sources 3 and 4: Turn Accomplices into Friends. Get advice or coaching from someone you respect, or ask a coworker, manager, or family member to hold you accountable for changing.
Source 5: Invert the Economy. Reward yourself with a pat on the back or an actual incentive.
Source 6: Control Your Space. Rearrange your desk, computer, or workplace in a way that helps you stick to the change, or make changes to other aspects of your physical space—move chairs, put up reminders, remove distractions or temptations, etc.

The key is to try several tactics in combination and to track your success. Use setbacks as data, the way a scientist would. Seek out the crucial moments—the times, places, and circumstances when your plan needs to be reinforced—and focus your tactics on those moments.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

I recently realized we aren’t out of debt because we really don’t want to pay all the money to make it happen! We have been on a debt payoff plan for years but never follow through because it’s so painful to pay our bills when it seems like we are just giving money away. It’s just too hard to catch up when we don’t even know what the balance is for because it has accumulated over several years. As a result, we lose steam after a few months, spend money on a nice night out or an evening entertaining friends, and get off track.

Can you share some tips to help us address our personal motivation and learn to “Love What We Hate”? Do you have any tips for motivating ourselves to get out of debt by turning it into a game we can win and enjoy playing?

Sincerely,
Wanting Off the Hamster Wheel

 Dear Hamster,

What a frustrating and sad situation. Not only are you struggling financially, you are beating yourself up for your setbacks and failures. You’re blaming your character when you should blame your plan.

In our book Change Anything we describe your situation as “The Willpower Trap.” It happens when you over-rely on your willpower instead of employing all six sources of influence. Your willpower lets you down, you blame yourself, and you become discouraged and even less successful.

The way out of this trap is to involve all six sources of influence, not just those related to personal motivation. You specifically ask for ways to address your personal motivation—and I’ll get there—but that’s not where I’d like to start. Instead, I’ll begin with structural ability.

Structural Ability. If “a nice night out or an evening entertaining friends” is enough to throw you over the edge, then you’re living too close to the edge. I recommend you take a few steps back by lowering your fixed expenses. I know these are difficult steps to take, but they will do wonders to lower the pressure you’re feeling today.

Find ways to reduce regular monthly payments

• Reduce your rent or mortgage. Consider renting out a room in your house, moving to a smaller apartment, or moving in with a friend or relative.
• Reduce your transportation costs. Consider selling a car or trading in your current car for a less expensive car. Downsizing a car will save more than your car payments. It will reduce insurance, gas, and repairs.
• Cancel non-critical services. Reduce monthly payments by cancelling non-critical services like cable TV, cell phone data plans, and magazine or newspaper subscriptions.
• Sell unnecessary assets. Sell assets like boats, power toys, vacation homes, etc.

Make impulse buying more difficult

• Cut up or cancel credit cards.
• Make tempting locations “out of bounds.” For example, stop going to particular stores or malls, stop visiting eBay and other online retailers.
• Never shop without an actual shopping list and never buy items that aren’t on the list.

Keep score

• Keep a visible scorecard or chart that shows your progress—and update it every day or every week.

Add another paycheck

• Consider taking a second job. An evening or weekend job that brings in an extra $100 a week might give you that extra margin you need.

Personal Motivation. It sounds as if your motivation wanes when you think to the past—especially when you can’t remember where your money went in the first place. Motivation works better when you focus on the future—on where you want to get. Here are a few ideas:

Visit your default and desired futures

• Select a very specific debt-reduction target. Make it as detailed as possible. For example: pay off my highest-rate credit card, pay off my car, or pay off my student loan. Then dedicate your savings to that goal alone.
• Select a very specific purchase that your debt-reduction target will make possible. Don’t make this an “optional expense” like a vacation. Instead, make it mandatory, like dental work, tires, or a replacement car. This target will be your North Star, a motivator and a guide when your mood is dark.
• Think deeply about what will happen if you don’t make your savings goal—if you can’t get your dental care or new tires, or if you can’t afford medical care for your loved ones.

Create a personal mission statement

• Write down your saving and spending plan and note why it is important to you. Have every family member sign it, then keep copies you can see and read when you feel tempted to overspend.

Make it a game

I like to build four elements into a savings game: a reasonable challenge, clear rules, social interaction, and immediate feedback. Below is an example:

• Set a weekly goal. Perhaps you could decide on a set figure to pay toward a credit card.
• Establish clear rules. Maybe establish different rules each week. For example, “This week our payment has to come from new money one of us has earned. Next week it has to come from saved money, and it has to come from our food budget.”
• Use cooperation or competition. For example, “This week, we’ll cooperate to jointly achieve our goal. Next week, we’ll compete to see who can reach their part of the goal first.”
• Give feedback and fabulous prizes. Make a big chart that shows your progress. Create magnificent, but free, prizes like paper crowns and towel capes for the Sultan of Savings. Celebrate your very real achievements by writing notes to each other and putting them into a scrapbook.

These are a few ideas to try. None of them are magic and none are tailored to you and your unique situation. In addition, they only deal with two of the six sources of influence. I encourage you to select, modify, or invent your own tactics. Make sure you include actions within each of the six sources of influence and make them big, high-leverage actions.

Best wishes,
David

Dear Crucial Skills,

When I tell my colleagues it’s time to improve our effectiveness, they get uptight about being told why they’re wrong and what to fix. It seems like they’re content to let standards slacken and inefficiencies run wild as long as they don’t have to hear about how much better we could be doing. How can I make improvement sound “cool” so my colleagues don’t feel like I’m forcing them to change?

Changeable

Dear Changeable,

If we could solve this common problem, think of the benefits we’d share. Imagine a department, an organization, or a country where everyone shared a passion for improvement. We’d see immediate advances in creativity, productivity, and competitiveness and I bet we’d see huge gains in engagement and satisfaction as well. So, how do we get there?

It will take more than a carefully worded conversation to solve this problem. In fact, if we think better words are all we need, then we’ve failed before we’ve begun. This challenge is ideal for an Influencer approach.

What your workforce needs is a passion for making things better and the knowledge that they can get it done. Neither of these is advanced through verbal persuasion alone. Changing hearts and minds requires more than data dumps, lectures, sermons, and rants.

I’ll begin with some first steps you might take to get this process going and then I’ll share a few examples from organizations that have made continuous improvement a central value within their culture.

1.  Actions you can take in the short term.

As an individual contributor seeking to influence your colleagues, it’s important to not try and use authority you don’t have. Instead of telling people what they should do, create situations that allow them to discover what they should do. Here are a few ideas.

Social Motivation. Create direct experiences with customers. Your colleagues might not want to listen to you, but nothing is more motivating than getting direct feedback from your customers—either internal or external. Find a way for customers to visit. They will speak the truth to your colleagues in ways you can’t.
Structural Motivation. You think your group is full of slack and inefficiencies, but your colleagues may not see it. So, find a way to make performance more public. Focus on the two or three metrics everyone sees as important and post them where everyone can see. A chart on the wall is objective so it’s hard to deny.
Social Motivation. Ask your colleagues to set an improvement goal based on what their customers want and need. Don’t worry whether it’s higher or lower than the goal you would set. It’s more important that they have a goal they can all accept. Next, have your colleagues—not you—evaluate their progress. This gives your colleagues a chance to motivate each other.
Personal Ability. When individuals—or the entire group—fail to achieve their goal, steer them away from casting blame. Instead, encourage them to focus on solutions. Get them to brainstorm ideas for improvement.
Structural Ability. Set up mini experiments to test your colleagues’ ideas. These should be low-risk tests you can complete in a day or two. Make sure others are involved in the testing and evaluating process. Don’t let this become your project. Use it to make your colleagues look good.

These are tactics you can implement on your own, even if you’re not a manager. Below, I’ll suggest a more intensive approach that requires management support.

2.  Actions your organization can take in the long term.

We’ve worked with several organizations that put continuous improvement at the center of their culture. Each has taken its unique path, but the behaviors they nurture—the vital behaviors—are remarkably similar. For an excellent description of this change-oriented culture, see Steven Spear’s HBR article, Fixing Health Care from the Inside, Today.

Focus on Vital Behaviors

• Scientist and the subject. Employees become scientists as well as subjects. They design their work to be a series of ongoing experiments.
• Trial and error. People use frequent, brief, low-cost, trials—with data—to address both problems and opportunities.
• Hold each other accountable. People hold each other accountable for continuous improvement—trying new ideas every week or month.

Driving these vital behaviors into a culture requires a concerted effort across the organization. This approach should be guided by the Six Sources of Influence. I’ll suggest a few tactics.

Personal Motivation. Use direct and vicarious experience to create a passion for improvement. Make sure every employee has a line-of-sight relationship with his or her customers. For example, an insurance company took jobs that had been organized around forms: “I’m the specialist on form 35c.” and reorganized them around people: “I’m the resource person for all of our agents in Denver.”

Have employees visit best-in-class companies—both within their industry and beyond—to learn what’s possible and to gather ideas to test. A mining company takes front-line supervisors to a best-in-class steel mill to get ideas for improving workplace safety.

Look for positive deviants—groups within their own firm that have achieved extraordinary results without extraordinary resources—and either visit them or invite them to visit. Surgeons compare surgical outcomes and then travel to learn from the best.

Personal Ability. Use training, coaching, and deliberate practice to help everyone become a scientist at their job. Teach people how to lead brief, low-risk, short cycle time experiments. A pharmaceutical firm trains people in Lean Six Sigma, and has them design experiments that take no more than two days.

Learn by doing. Every week, each department should design and conduct a trial that tests an improvement idea. A hospital asks every unit to complete one experiment per week.

Build confidence. As teams make progress, they’ll discover they have far more control over their work process and work environment than they ever realized. When they reach this insight, their progress and morale will surge.

Social Motivation & Ability. Have employees present their experiments to others in the organization using poster sessions and twenty-minute presentations. A computer chip manufacturer has its entire organization, including senior leaders, attend these improvement fairs. Make sure everyone participates in designing, testing, and evaluating improvement experiments. Each experiment should be a team endeavor.

These are just a few examples from three of the six sources of influence. For the best results, brainstorm strategies in all six sources to bring about the change you desire. Some of these actions require more formal authority than you may have, but I hope they stimulate your thinking. Let me know how it goes.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

As a manager, I’m guilty of getting very task focused and not taking the time to develop my people. I focus on my customers and put them above all else—usually taking it upon myself to handle the really difficult customer issues. As a result, I fail to give my people a chance to be “bloodied” or to “earn their stripes” with tough, demanding customers.

Mixed-up Manager

 Dear Mixed-up,

I’ve coached leaders for more than thirty years, and you’re wise to recognize that this is a serious problem. Our research shows that nearly half of all managers struggle with the same challenge. It’s a true career blocker.

I think you described the dilemma perfectly. You want what’s best for your customer and you want to minimize headaches and opportunities for potential screw ups. You decide to either handle the customer yourself or assign one of your experienced staff. It may sound like a smart way to operate, but in the long run, you will fail as a manager. Managers need to have every member of their team build the necessary competencies to become “experienced.”

There are lots of ways you might address this challenge. I’ll suggest three potential strategies, and then use one as an example:

1. Build staff development time into your day. For example, regularly have inexperienced members of your team partner with you when you work with customers. Coach them in advance regarding the customer’s situation and assign them a role that requires face-to-face problem solving with the customer.

2. Create a formal mentoring program. For example, assign senior and junior team members to work together.

3. Use pairing across your team. For example, have people work in pairs, and mix up the pairs on a frequent basis.

Each of these strategies can work, but the key is to support it using all six sources of influence. Make sure you document what you do and the results you obtain—collect data and use it to analyze and adjust your strategy.

I’m going to use the “pairing across your team” strategy as an example. Menlo Innovations, a software development firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, uses pairing across their organization. Programmers work in pairs and share a single computer. They are paired with a different partner each week and never get to write code without a partner looking on.

The obvious question is whether or not having two people at one computer cuts productivity in half. The answer is, “No!” Pairing has cut mistakes and missteps at Menlo Innovations dramatically. It has greatly expanded the number of programmers who can handle tough, demanding challenges and has resulted in amazing levels of customer satisfaction.

What if you tried pairing your people? Imagine you paired people on every project that didn’t involve travel. And you switched up the pairing fairly often. My bet is that you would provide a higher level of customer service while building incredible bench strength within your team.

Suppose you have an important presentation coming up with one of your most demanding customers—a presentation on market analytics. You’d have one of your senior people pair with a more junior analyst and place the keyboard in front of the junior analyst. They’d work together to prepare the presentation, and then tag team in front of the customer.

Let’s suppose you thought enough of this idea to give it a try. You would want to test it in a way that gives it the best possible chance of success. Below are a few ideas, drawing on the six sources of influence:

Measurable Results. The results you want are improved customer satisfaction and improved skills/experience across your team.

Vital Behavior. The vital behavior is to pair up people, always have them work with a partner, and switch the partners often—perhaps weekly so people continually cross train.

Personal Motivation. Take a team to visit Richard’s organization in Ann Arbor, or visit their website to see case studies of how well it works. My bet is that a single visit will convince you and your team to give it a shot.

Personal Ability. Menlo Innovations has been at this long enough to build “people skills” into their interview and selection process. You can begin by setting some ground rules, anticipating concerns, and role playing how to handle these concerns. And, of course, reading Crucial Conversations will help.

Social Motivation & Ability. Partners will motivate each other. Working together increases accountability and focus in marvelous ways. Of course, you will also be a resource by coaching all the pairs.

Structural Motivation. Your organization’s reward system probably focuses on individual accomplishment which can undermine teamwork. Make sure everyone knows their performance review will not only focus on individual performance, you also will review their ability to help their partners succeed.

Structural Ability. The biggest structural change is taking away people’s computers. At Menlo Innovations no one has their own. They truly share. Again, this may be difficult at your organization, but what if you tried it for a month? People would have to remove Facebook and iTunes from their computers, but is that such a great loss at work?

Let’s step back a minute. You might not go with pairing. You might select a different approach to combine mentoring with customer service; however, whatever you choose, make sure you line up all six sources of influence to support your vital behaviors. Evaluate your results and make course corrections as you move forward.

Again, thanks for sharing your challenge. If you tackle this problem, not only will you help your people “earn their stripes,” you’ll make yourself more eligible for a few extra bars on your career jacket.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

I am trying to encourage employees to work safely, but often meet with resistance and feel like people only behave when the safety guys are around. How can I create long-term change and encourage employees to take responsibility for creating a safe work environment?

Seeking Workplace Safety

Dear Safety,

Thanks for asking this important question. At first, it seems strange that people would resist following safe work practices. After all, none of us wants to be injured at work. Yet the problem you describe is very common—in part because many of us already feel safe at work.

Our workplaces are far safer than they used to be. In the U.S., time lost due to injuries has dropped by more than 50 percent since 1991. This means many of the most obvious sources of danger have been addressed and resolved. Now we are focusing on less obvious dangers and more stubborn behaviors.

Another complication is that many of the most dangerous behaviors are ones we are guilty of in our personal lives as well as at work. We accept the risks at home and we think we should be able to take the same risks at work. For example, many of the most fatal workplace accidents involve bad driving behaviors—we fail to buckle up, we speed, we drive carelessly, and we back into things. Another huge source of injuries involves bad ladder behaviors—we fail to use a ladder when we should, we don’t tie off our ladder, or we carry tools in our hands as we climb the ladder. How many of us ignore these risks when we’re not at work? So, it’s a challenge to get us to take these risks seriously when we’re on the job.

I’ll use our Influencer model to suggest a few steps you can take to create a safer working environment.

1. Focus on a few crucial moments. My guess is that most of your people follow most of the safety practices most of the time. This means your safety problem boils down to a few perfect storms—crucial moments when some of your people fail to follow some of the safety practices. Get your team involved by having them identify the handful of crucial moments that are most dangerous in their work environment. Our research study Silent Danger identified five crucial moments that we often use to justify skipping safety practices:

• Get It Done. Justifying unsafe practices due to tight timelines.
• Undiscussable Incompetence. Unsafe practices that stem from skill deficits that people don’t feel able to discuss.
• Just this Once. Justifying unsafe practices as exceptions to the rule.
• This Is Overboard. Justifying unsafe practices because the precautions seem excessive.
• Are You a Team Player? Unsafe practices that people justify by saying they are for the good of the team, company, or customer.

2. Identify the vital behaviors in these crucial moments. The vital behaviors are the few actions that will keep people safe during the crucial moments they’ve identified. For example, suppose one of the crucial moments your team has identified is, “When it’s our fault that we’re behind schedule, we do whatever it takes to make up our lost time. And a typical shortcut is failing to use ladders when we should.”

The vital behaviors are: a.) Watch out for this crucial moment and warn others when you think you are at risk; b.) Be especially careful to avoid dangerous and tempting shortcuts when you’re in this crucial moment; and c.) Confront those you see taking a dangerous shortcut.

3. Build personal motivation. Your question revealed that people aren’t taking personal responsibility for their safety behaviors. They know what they should do but they aren’t doing it. This sounds like a motivation problem.

The typical mistake we make in motivating is to rely on verbal persuasion: data dumps, lectures, sermons, and rants. These are the least effective ways to motivate people.

The most effective way is personal experience. For example, we found that nurses who suffered a hospital-acquired infection were much more likely to remind their peers to wash their hands. Their experience turned hand hygiene into a moral passion.

But people don’t need to be injured to become motivated. Personal experience isn’t required. Our nurses were just as motivated if they’d had a family member or close friend who suffered an infection. Vicarious experience can be just as powerful.

Below is a link to a video we’ve used on off-shore oil rigs to remind people that accidents still happen and have life-changing consequences. We use it to start a conversation. Our goal is to have people share their own experiences and reconnect to the reasons they need to keep safe and watch each others’ backs.

You might also like to watch and share this compelling video about workplace safety.

4. Build Social Motivation. Another of your concerns is that people see you as the enforcer. There should be social motivation, but reminders should come from their peers as well as supervisors.

Often, it is important to involve senior managers and leaders and show them what they can do during crucial moments. For example, during a crisis when everybody is rushing and tempted to take shortcuts, it is very helpful for the manager who is over the entire crisis to remind people that they still need to take every safety precaution. These timely warnings from senior leaders counter the cynical expectations many employees have about their organization’s commitment to safety.

Obviously, these are just a few ideas to add to the mix. You’ll want to consider actions in each of the six sources of influence. Remember, leaders who combine four or more of these sources are ten times more successful at achieving their desired results.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

My job in sales means that prospects and customers call me all the time and want quick responses. As a result, I become very reactive—responding to urgent problems. Sometimes this short-term focus comes at the expense of long-term priorities, such as building and developing large accounts. How can I learn to be proactive instead of reactive?

Reacting

Dear Reacting,

Great question! I’d have replied sooner, but I was responding to short-term priorities and urgent problems. Know what I mean? I think we all have this career-limiting habit to some extent, and it’s a perfect place to apply our Change Anything approach.

I’ll use myself as an example: I know I need to be far-sighted and proactive, I want to be far sighted and proactive, and yet I find myself stuck in a short-term and reactive pattern. I sail along down my comfortable, reactive groove responding to e-mails and answering calls until I’m blindsided by an important milestone I somehow missed. Then I beat myself up for not having the willpower to stay focused on what’s truly important. I get caught in the Willpower Trap.

I blame my failures on my willpower—my character. I blame myself for being a weak person. But at the Change Anything Labs, we’ve discovered what you and I are facing isn’t a willpower problem; it’s a math problem. It turns out we are surrounded by influences that we don’t even see. We are blind and outnumbered. Our world is perfectly organized to perpetuate our status quo behaviors, and we don’t even realize it.

Avoid the Willpower Trap. If I want to become more far-sighted and proactive, I’ll need to recognize the sources of influence that keep me in my short-term, reactive track and pull them over to my side. Here are a few ideas:

• Personal Motivation. I realized I feel a comfortable sense of accomplishment when I respond to people’s urgent requests, but don’t even think about my long-term projects until I’ve missed them. To fix this, I’ve placed a sticky note on the bottom of my computer screen that lists the four most important long-term projects I need to accomplish. It captures my attention each day and helps keep my top priorities in front of me as I respond to new requests from people by e-mail or phone—mostly short-term urgent requests. This simple reminder motivates me to focus on my long-term projects as well as finishing my rewarding short-term projects.
• Personal Ability. I’ve learned a script for responding to these day-to-day “urgent” requests. I say something like, “I’ve got your request. I will need about 24 hours to dig into it. I’ll get back to you by end-of-day tomorrow to let you know when it will be done.” This gives me time to understand it, prioritize it against my other tasks, and figure out how to fit it in.
• Social Motivation & Ability. I’ve learned to delegate a lot of my short-term urgent tasks. The fact that I can do them and sort of enjoy doing them doesn’t mean I should do them. One of the rules of delegating is to delegate the tasks you—and potentially others—are most skilled at. And these often include the short-term urgent tasks that distract you from more important priorities. Use these tasks to help others build their skills, get client contact, and gain valuable experience.
• Structural Motivation. I created a work plan that lists projects, shows the steps I need to complete for each project, and the dates I need to complete each step on a 3×5 card. In effect, I’m taking long-term projects, breaking them into pieces, and turning them into a series of short-term urgent tasks. This sounds pretty simple, but it works—probably because it is so simple. It also works because I’m motivated to cross each task off my list.
• Structural Ability. Many of my longer-term projects require periods of uninterrupted thought, planning, and writing. I can’t do them effectively if I allow my e-mail and phone to derail me. So, I schedule a couple of hours each day when I won’t read e-mails or answer the phone. I have specific goals for these periods, and they have become some of the most productive hours in my day.

Be the Scientist as well as the Subject. Begin by developing ideas in each of the six sources of influence. Then, try them out in combination to see what works for you. Know that your progress won’t be perfect. It’s nearly impossible to develop the perfect plan the very first time.

Instead, progress comes when you turn bad days into good data. Acknowledge your setbacks, but don’t let them get you down. Use them as data points. Ask yourself, “Why did I fail?” and “What can I do to prevent a similar failure in the future?” Analyze and adjust. Refine your plan. Soon, you’ll see a path of steady progress.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

In our hospital, we have a person who made a grave mistake during surgery. As the manager’s pet, she was not disciplined or reprimanded, but anyone else would have been fired on the spot. The rest of the staff noticed the special treatment given to this individual and are extremely resentful. How do I, as one of those staff members, interact with the offending person without letting my resentment show?

Resentful Coworker

 

Dear Resentful,

We studied this very problem in our research, Silence Kills, and found that 84 percent of healthcare professionals observe colleagues take dangerous shortcuts when working with patients and yet less than 10 percent speak up about their concerns.

I applaud you for raising your concerns. Nobody wants to work in an atmosphere of resentment that could compromise your paramount concern of patient safety. However, the situation you describe is complicated. There are many parties and probably many perspectives on the same set of facts. Let’s begin by examining your concerns.

1. Ask yourself, “What do I really want?” Think about what you want long-term for yourself, the other person, and for your relationship. This is what I learned from your question:

• You want fairness and justice. You think your peer is “the manager’s pet,” receives “special treatment,” and perhaps should have been disciplined, reprimanded, or even fired.
• You want to make sure your team provides patients with the safest, best care possible.
• You want a positive set of relationships so people don’t feel resentment toward one another.

2. Master your stories. Each of these concerns is based on a set of facts and/or a series of incidents, including the mistake that happened during surgery. But different staff members, and your manager, may interpret these same facts in different ways. All of you are telling yourselves stories about what these facts mean.

Treat your story as a story, not as a fact. Your story should be your best, most honest interpretation of what the facts mean. But also look out for what we call “clever stories”—interpretations that let you off the hook for feeling resentful and letting your feelings show.

Interrogate your story with two questions: a) “Do I really have all the facts I need to be certain my story is true?” and b) “Is there any other story that could fit this same set of facts?” Let’s examine two of the stories you’re telling yourself:

Your story about fairness and justice: What are the facts or incidents that combine to make you tell yourself a story about injustice? How confident are you that your story is true? Here are a few questions to consider:

It sounds as if you are holding your peer accountable for not being disciplined. Shouldn’t that concern be with your manager more than with your peer?

I wonder whether you and your manager are telling yourselves different stories about the “grave mistake.” Your manager may not have witnessed the mistake and that may mean he/she has less information. On the other hand, your manager may have interviewed your colleague as well as others who were there and this information might be both important and confidential.

Your story about patient safety: Any time you have a concern about patient safety you need to deal with it. It’s one of those non-negotiables. However, before you have this crucial conversation, examine your story.

It would be easy to tell yourself the story that your manager is putting friendship above patient safety. That would be a very troubling conclusion. But is it true?

In the old days, errors were often blamed on whoever touched the patient last. Every error was considered “operator error.” Then the pendulum swung toward “system error.” Errors and near misses were seen as caused by faulty processes and procedures rather than individuals. Of course, sensible people demand both capable systems and capable individuals. Neither is sufficient by itself. Do you see how this interplay complicates the stories you and your manager tell about the very same incident?

I don’t have enough information to know whose story is closer to the truth. But I think there is a lot of room for people who value fairness, justice, and patient safety to disagree. Have this conversation with your manager, but don’t assume he or she has bad intentions.

3. Start with the facts, then tentatively share your story. Take the time to prepare for this conversation. Try writing it out as a script and then review it to make sure you:

• Avoid accusations or any “hot” words or phrases.
• Begin with your good intentions—what it is you really want. Explain that this conversation is about patient safety. That is your mutual purpose.
• Start with the facts. These facts include the incidents you are fairly sure you and your manager will agree on. This is your common ground.
• Tentatively tell your story. Draw the pattern these facts are forming for you. But remember, your manager may see the facts—and almost certainly sees the pattern—differently than you do. Be careful to be respectful of your manager’s story.
• Stop so that your manager can share his or her perspective. Understand that some of the facts your manager has are likely to be confidential.

I also encourage you to review our latest study, The Silent Treatment, at www.silenttreatmentstudy.com or register for The Silent Treatment learning series to learn how to solve critical communication breakdowns and avoid dangerous mistakes in the hospital.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,
I run a city initiative to clean up garbage in the spring. Do you have any advice for influencing residents to stop littering in the first place?

Fighting Litter

Dear Fighting,

Thank you for your community service. We each need to do our part. After all, we are the community, and the community is us.

This is a great challenge. I’ll use it to illustrate the Influencer process, applying a few basic principles from Influencer and our new book, Change Anything. I’ll also pull ideas from a successful anti-litter initiative I found while researching your question.

Crucial Moments. Look for leverage points—the times, places, and people that contribute the most to your litter problem—then focus your efforts on these hot spots.

• Places: There are probably a handful of places that are magnets for trash—abandoned lots near schools or bars, busy bus stops, fast-food restaurants, etc.
• Times: There are probably a few times of the week or the year when people are most likely to litter—Friday nights, before and after football games, during parades, etc.
• People: There are probably a few people who are especially likely to litter—people who eat while driving, etc.

Focusing on crucial moments is a very powerful way to magnify your efforts—regardless of your challenge. The leaders of the anti-litter campaign on San Juan Island discovered a perfect storm for litter: Place—the main road to the dump; Time—weekends; People—those who drive pickup trucks without a cover on their load. They created a campaign called “Secure Your Load,” using signs, direct mail, and press coverage. Their targeted campaign eliminated a major source of litter on the island.

Vital Behaviors. What few behaviors have the biggest impact in these crucial moments? I’ll share a few potential behaviors supported by literature and anti-litter initiatives. You should determine the two or three vital behaviors that are key to addressing your community’s litter problem.

• Remove litter before it becomes the norm. Researchers have found that litter attracts litter. This is also known as the broken window effect. People see litter—or a broken window, graffiti, or weeds—assume it’s an accepted practice, and contribute to the problem.
  A while ago, my wife and I lived in a neighborhood that had become a target for late-night graffiti taggers. We helped organize a volunteer initiative that made it cheap, if not free, to get paint that exactly matched the buildings, fences, walls, or other structures that were being tagged. This worked much better than painting over graffiti using a standard white paint, which left white boxes on the sides of buildings.  We expected the taggers would return again, so businesses were encouraged to keep the bucket of paint handy and to paint out the graffiti each morning. When taggers discovered that their graffiti work had been entirely removed before members of the public saw it, many left our neighborhood. The situation was not eliminated, but it improved dramatically within just a few weeks.
• Reduce the source of the litter. Another successful component of the San Juan Island Anti-Litter Initiative was to identify a few organizations that generated far more than their fair share of litter. They found that the Washington State ferry system was placing cardboard tags on the windshields of every car waiting to board ferries. When these cars drove off, these bits of cardboard became litter. They influenced the ferry system to change the way it tracked cars, eliminating the need for the tags and reducing litter.
• Place trash receptacles in litter-magnet locations. This is an obvious vital behavior. Find the litter magnets and add a trash can or dumpster. The challenge of course is that these trash receptacles will have to be emptied on a regular basis, but emptying them is far easier and less expensive than picking up trash.

Develop a Six-Source Plan. Once you’ve found the leverage points—the times, places, and people that contribute the most to your litter problem—and identified your vital behaviors, develop a plan incorporating all six sources of influence that supports the vital behaviors. I’ll suggest a couple of strategies within each of the six sources.

• Personal Motivation. Meet with the businesses that are litter magnets. Explain the broken window theory, then ask them to pick up trash every day for just two weeks so they can test whether the theory will work for them. Discovering a solution that works can be very motivating.
• Personal Ability. Make it easy. We gave businesses free paint that was already formulated to match their building. You might try giving them free trash bags and arranging for extra garbage pickups.
• Social Motivation & Ability. Form a quick-response team of neighbors or businesses. These teams can work with a business that’s a litter magnet—picking up their litter every day for two weeks to prove the broken-window theory. Another social strategy is to sponsor a public education campaign that involves local newspapers, schools, community Web sites, popular bloggers, and more. On San Juan Island, the local paper set aside space for a regular “Trash Talk” column.
• Structural Motivation. Often the litter magnets are in violation of city laws. While you offer them help for keeping their areas litter free, you can also remind them of these laws.  Businesses may also need permission from the city to place a trash receptacle on a city sidewalk.
• Structural Ability. As I mentioned above, one of the best tools for battling litter is the humble trash can. Make it easy for people to dispose of their trash. Work with businesses, schools, the city, and other organizations to install appropriately sized trash receptacles in locations that are targets for litter. Make sure these receptacles are emptied regularly.

I hope I’ve sparked ideas for applying these principles to your litter problem as well as other problems you face at work, at home, or in your community. Sometimes I think of the Influencer process as a magic wand for creating change. Once you have the wand, your question becomes, “What problem should I tackle?” When it comes to influence, there is no prize for thinking small. Maybe you can use Influencer to prevent littering in your neighborhood. Or maybe you’ll take on a different problem. Maybe you’ll influence people to live healthier lifestyles, or to spend more quality time with their families, or to perform at a higher level at work.

What will you influence for good?

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

My sixteen-year-old daughter excels academically and plans to pursue a university education to become a physiotherapist. She is a very intelligent and sensible teenager and is admired by family, teachers, and friends. However, her teacher called me with concerns about her recent behavior, attitude, and work habits. Lately, she procrastinates homework assignments, rolls her eyes and talks when the teacher is talking, and disrupts the class by getting up during inappropriate times.

I have also noticed that she is always tired—partially due to the fact that she stays up too late. She has no ambition to get a job or a driver’s license, and she resents helping with light household chores like washing dishes.

When we try to have a conversation with her about these issues, she gets defensive and argues with us. I don’t feel like I can have a constructive conversation without it turning into a power struggle. How can I have a positive influence on her?

Powerless

  Dear Powerless,

It sounds as if you have a wonderful and talented daughter. Congratulations. None of this parenting stuff is easy. You and your daughter are now navigating that tricky time when you help her increase her independence, autonomy, and responsibility. It’s a time of exploring and testing, which involves growing pains all around.

There are many parenting skills I’m sure you’ll employ. These range from setting limits and providing choices to giving your daughter an opportunity to be heard. I’m going to focus on some approaches that are especially appropriate to use with people who are sensitive to being ordered, directed, or nagged by you—think spouses, bosses, and, yes, teenagers.

1. Before a conversation, ask yourself, “What do I really want?” Try to avoid getting too caught up in any single issue—unless your daughter’s safety is involved. While your short-term goal may be obedience and respect, your long-term goal is to enable her to make wise choices on her own—and to involve you in frank and trusting dialogue.

2. Encourage her to detail her long-term aspirations. Your daughter is caught between short-term certainties and long-term aspirations. These short-term certainties are winning because they are more concrete, believable, and immediate. Find ways to make her career goals more salient and real by encouraging her to get some direct experience. For example, have her visit a local college, maybe spend the night in one of their hosting programs, and attend a few classes in her area of interest. In addition, consider having her volunteer at a local hospital or clinic where she can assist professionals and see what the career is like. The more real and detailed her aspirations are, the more motivating they will be, and the more they will influence her daily decisions.

3. Ask her about her aspirations, and get her to explore the barriers. Make time to talk with your daughter about her aspirations, and take care to avoid jumping in with advice. Your goal is to show respect for her ability to work things out, and to make her do the heavy lifting. Sometimes this is called the Columbo Method, after the TV detective from the 70s. Columbo played dumb and asked open-ended questions instead of giving answers. For example, it may be obvious to you that staying up late and procrastinating are barriers, but you want your daughter to have to think it through for herself.

Parent: “Hmmm. You want to study physiotherapy in college, and make that your career. I just don’t understand your whole plan for making that happen. How do you see your classes and your grades this semester fitting into that?”

4. Don’t advocate for one side of an action if it forces your daughter to advocate for the other side. Suppose you make a statement that advocates for one side over the other. Here’s how the dialogue might go.

Parent: “When you stay up past eleven thirty, you are tired and grumpy the next morning.”

Daughter: “So what? At least I don’t miss out on the TV shows people are talking about the next day.”

You have advocated for one side and forced your daughter to advocate for the other side. Together, you’ve fleshed out both sides—the costs and benefits of staying up late—but you’ve done it in a way that puts you and your daughter on opposite sides.

5. Roll with resistance. This is a technique from Motivational Interviewing, an approach we discuss in Change Anything. If your daughter takes a position on one side, don’t rise to the bait and take the other side. That would turn your conversation into an argument. Instead, roll with her resistance—reflect back what she has said, and use the Columbo Method to encourage her to elaborate and say more. Usually, she will then explore both sides.

Daughter: “I have to stay up late. It’s when all the popular shows are on. If I don’t watch them, I’ll be left out of the conversations at school.”

Parent (paraphrase without taking sides): “You feel pressured to watch late-night shows so you don’t get left out of conversations at school?”

Daughter: “A little bit, but I like some of the shows, too.”

Parent (get her to explore both sides): “Okay, you like some late-night TV shows and you feel a little pressure to watch them. What do you see as the other benefits and costs of staying up late to watch them?”

Daughter: “I like the shows. I want to see them. But I guess it does make it hard to get up in the morning. And sometimes I have to rush to get my homework done.”

6. Practice patience. Few of us are good at weighing long-term goals against short-term temptations. Don’t expect your daughter to master it all at once. Continue to push her to evaluate her options and make her own decisions.

David

Dear Crucial Skills,

What should I do if I believe I have reached my “peak” in my company and professional growth is stagnant? I posed this question to HR and managers only to receive dull feedback, which makes me feel they have no ideas or suggestions. I suggested I earn another bachelor’s degree in a field we need, but the tuition assistance program only permits me to take classes directly related to my current position. I have my letter of resignation ready to go and am simply waiting for the job market to improve, but I hate to start over again and prefer to avoid it if possible. What should I do?

Needing Growth

  Dear Needing,

Thanks for your question. Many people are in your position—often without even knowing it. Their careers have stagnated and their jobs may even be at risk. This is a tough situation, but there are actions anyone can take to regain control of a stalled career.

We studied this question while writing our upcoming book Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success. We went into organizations and asked people: “If you were facing a really tough problem at work, and had time to get input from someone in your work group, who would you go to for the best, most trustworthy advice? You can name up to three people.” We found there was a lot of consensus on who these people were. We got what statisticians call a “power curve.” Half the people weren’t named by any of their peers; however, about ten percent were named by nearly half of their peers and were recognized by everyone as the “go to” people. Not surprisingly, managers also named them as the most promotable.

When we look closely at these highly valued individuals—across a wide range of organizations—we learn they share the same three characteristics:

1.  Know Your Stuff. These promotable people are top performers at their current jobs, and put in regular effort to stay on top. If they are software developers then they are among the most skilled at writing code. If they are salespeople then they are among the most skilled at closing sales. They work hard to keep current and hone their craft.

2. Focus on the Right Stuff. Top performers seek out the problems that have the greatest strategic importance to their team, their manager, and their organization—and find ways to contribute in these areas. How do they get to these mission-critical assignments? First, they are intensely interested in understanding their teams’, managers’, and organizations’ priorities, and the challenges these priorities entail. Second, they equip themselves to make their best and highest contribution to addressing these challenges. They work on themselves, their skill set, and their access to critical tasks.

3. Build a Reputation for Being Helpful. Top performers are networkers. But their networks aren’t just a collection of business cards and friends. These promotable people use their expertise and time to develop a reputation for being helpful. They become widely known and respected by others because they help others solve their problems.

With this as a backdrop, consider what you can do to position yourself for career growth inside your organization, or potentially in a different organization. Begin with an honest, steely-eyed assessment of where you stand on the three characteristics of highly valued employees. Do you have a reputation for knowing your stuff, focusing on the right stuff, and being helpful?

Second, work to improve your reputation in these areas. Begin by asking some questions that are a bit different from “what are my career opportunities here?” Instead, get some informal time with the leaders and peers you respect most, and ask them about the most important priorities they see, the most critical challenges they face, and the best way you can help them achieve their goals. There is nothing wrong with asking about career opportunities, but those questions haven’t yielded the results you want. So, try asking questions that will help you build your reputation.

As you discover key priorities and challenges, you may learn you need to skill up, but it’s doubtful you need another bachelor’s degree. It’s more likely a few classes, a certification, or a volunteer assignment will get you the skills and experience you need. For example, if you are trying to get into a project management or supervisory role, can you find a well-known nonprofit organization in the community that would have a specific short-term project you could assist them with in the evenings or on the weekends? You could then add these classes, training certifications, and experiences to your resume and include the people you worked for as references.

These suggestions require that you don’t allow yourself to be limited to what your organization is willing to sponsor. Instead, you may need to invest your own resources and time outside of work in the short-term to achieve your long-term goals. I also want to emphasize the importance of maintaining strong relationships with HR and your management team. You don’t want to have the reputation of a dissatisfied employee—a complainer. That would undercut the very reputation you are trying to build.

I wish you the very best in your career development and agree with your point that the current job market presents obvious challenges for everyone—hopefully short-term challenges.

David