Credibility

[Via a friend at McKinney] If you want some practice at making ideas stickier, I have a great case study for you. Rope aside 30 minutes and follow along with the process below. It concerns the work of a group called The Girl Effect. Here’s the game plan:

1. Start here. It’s a pdf document with statistics demonstrating the value of investing in girls in the developing world. (For example: “When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.”) Print out this document (and the instructions for step 2) and slowly move away from your computer.

2. With PDF in hand, give yourself this mission: To boil it all down. No one is going to read all these stats, and even if they do, they won’t remember them. They certainly won’t be moved to action by them. So how can you get people *excited* about “girl investment”? Imagine that you’ve got 2 minutes of the audience’s attention to make your case. How would you translate the data into something simple, emotional, specific? (By the way, just by thinking about this, you’re already ahead of the game — most social enterprises I’ve worked with would have simply published the PDF and declared victory…)

3. No, really, take a minute and think about it. It’ll make it more fun to compare your approach to theirs.

4. OK, now watch their 2-minute Youtube video and come back here for some postgame analysis.

5. This is a textbook sticky idea. (Forewarning: At this point, I’m going to geek out and deconstruct the video piece by piece.) If you’ve read Made to Stick, you’ll notice the elements. It starts with a schema violation (“So what else is new?”). Then there’s a curiosity gap: “What if there was an unexpected solution… Would you even know it if you saw it?” Then, there’s the surprise: “A girl.” The cumulative effect of these elements is critical: They’ve got our attention. We’re on the hook.

They’ve “paid” for our attention, and now they’ve got to cash it in to explain what they want. How do you explain “girl investment”? They make it concrete by asking you to visualize a specific girl. They tell the story of what the investment does for her and the people around her. (Notice, by the way, that they manage to make it concrete despite using only text blocks — an impressive feat.) The concrete elements build up (the husband, the school uniform, the loan, the cow, the village council). Suddenly, they’ve explained a complicated idea to you without making you feel like you’re receiving instruction. (BTW, the team wisely didn’t assume that it would be self-evident that investing in girls is “the solution.” They took the time to explain their logic, in a simple, but not oversimplified, way.)

At this point, they’ve got a credibility problem. You now understand what they mean by investing in girls, but why would you believe that the “girl effect” can make a dent in big global problems? The approach they use is “micro –> macro”. First, they paint a picture of a single girl. They show how the investment has cascading effects in her family and in her community. Then, they shift to the macro. “Multiply that by 600 million girls in the developing world…” [The zooming-out effect with the dots is a nice touch to make this more concrete.] This micro/macro approach also works well for entrepreneurs — I’ve often seen entrepreneurs highlight a single, vivid customer situation and then switch to the macro (“Our market research shows that there’s a $1.2 billion market made up of 181,000 customers with the same needs as this one.”)

Then comes the wrap-up. ideally, this will inspire you and move you closer to action. I love the line: “Invest in a girl and she will do the rest.” It makes you feel like you’re on a team — you do your part and she’ll do hers. Which brings me to my one (and really only) quibble: I don’t like the closing line … “It’s no big deal. Just the future of humanity.” To me, this line was a bit jarring … just when you’re feeling positive and empowered, all of the sudden you’re hit with a tinge of guilt. (“It’s on you, pal — the future of humanity.”) I think it would have been stronger to end with the “Invest in a girl and she will do the rest.”

But let’s not quibble. This is a brilliant video, and I predict it will be seen by lots and lots of people. Even better, it will motivate action. [Here’s The Girl Effect web site.]

Nope. It’s an urban legend. Nina Shen Rastogi explains.

I recently did a workshop with a group that’s working to remind people that racism still exists in America and must be actively fought. They pointed out that many people have, in a sense, declared victory on race — after all, haven’t the racist elements of the law been expunged? Haven’t most of the overtly cruel acts of racism stopped? Don’t we have a frontrunner for President who is black? Yes to all, but as this group pointed out, that’s not equivalent to the end of racism.

Let’s face it, this is a tough issue to get people to confront. It’s a touchy subject. Most people walk into the discussion with pre-formed strong feelings, one way or the other. So how do you get the message across, to a resistant audience, that “We’re not done yet”?

Take a look at a video called “A Girl Like Me,” directed by Kiri Davis, that provides an unforgettable reminder that racism isn’t dead. This is the most moving piece of communication I’ve seen this year. (Unfortunately, the mind-blowing bit is buried in the middle of the video. My advice is to fast-forward to the 3:20 mark and watch for about 1.5-2 min.) As you’ll see, we’re not done yet.

There are 6 principles of sticky ideas, and folks, Canoe Man has all 6. It’s no wonder why this bizarro tale has captivated the UK public.

Robert M brought it to our attention with this introduction: “Man vanishes at sea in 2002, only his battered kayak is found. Wife and two sons mourn, then wife claims life insurance 13 months later. Wife sells house and moves to Panama at the beginning of 2007. In Nov 2007 man walks into a police station, claiming to be the missing person who has lost his memory. Then, a photo turns up which shows man and wife in 2006 in Panama talking to a property developer. Sons are outraged because they were under the impression their father was dead.” And there’s more uncovered every day…

If someone doesn’t have the movie rights to this saga, I’m gonna make the first bid. In the meantime, go kill an hour and read up on the whole thing.

Here’s a story from Dave Rendall, who has a blog called the Freak Factor. (I love his post that argues that if you’re getting rejected, you’re doing something right.)

I hadn’t seen Tammy in almost a year, when she approached me in the hallway. I was there to teach an evening class for non-traditional students. She told me that her cohort was about to complete their last class and invited me to join the celebration. When I arrived, she was anxious to share some news.

Tammy had taken my course in Organizational Behavior the previous fall and one of the topics is change management. The classic model for this concept is Kurt Lewin’s force-field analysis, which helps managers to envision the driving forces pushing change and the restraining forces acting against change. By understanding and manipulating these forces, effective changes can be achieved. However, this is a relatively abstract concept and can become very complex in the context of an organization.

In order to make this concept stick, I use a few of the SUCCES principles from MTS. I start by keeping it simple. Instead of applying this model to an organization, I start by asking students to choose a meaningful change that they’ve been wanting to make in their own life, but haven’t started yet. Selecting a change that matters to them also creates an emotional link to the activity.

They write this change in the middle of a piece of paper and then I ask them why they want to make this change. These reasons are the driving forces and are listed on the left side of the paper on arrows pointing to the right. We then consider the barriers to making the change. These restraining forces are listed on the right side of the paper on arrows pointing left.

To make the activity more concrete, I try to physically illustrate the action of the two forces. I stand in front of the class with a chair and ask for a volunteer. The chair signifies the change, I am the driving forces and the volunteer is the restraining forces. I push the chair and the other student pushes back. The chair doesn’t move. It is “frozen.”

This illustrates the importance of “unfreezing,” which is the first part of Lewin’s change model. “Changing” occurs when driving forces are strengthened or added and when restraining forces are weakened or removed. Before explaining this, I ask the students how I can get the chair to move. The suggestions usually include the four options listed above. Without even reading the text, students can figure out how the process works in the physical world. In fact, during one class a student’s 10 year-old son was in the room. When I asked how to move the chair, the room was silent. The first person to respond was the young boy. He said, “Add more force!” He was exactly right and I was very pleased. I had made Lewin concrete and simple enough for a child to understand.

The activity is also credible because it offers a testable credential. Students are asked to assign numerical values to the strength of their driving and restraining forces. The cumulative scores for each set of forces shows why they haven’t made the change yet (not enough driving force and/or too much restraining force). We then work to increase driving forces and decrease restraining forces. The students always come up with creative ideas that they can apply to their own life. We discuss these as a class so students can see for themselves how it can work in their situation and those of their classmates.

I also share stories of how I’ve used this model to create change in my life. Each time I teach this concept, I choose a change that I want to make and work through the exercise along with the students. This creates a growing list of stories of success and failure, which brings us back to Tammy.

She wanted to start her own business. During the course of the exercise, she explained her driving and restraining forces. I asked if it was possible that her current job might also be a restraining force. Since she liked her job and was paid well, she did not have a lot of natural motivation to go out on her own. Even though she had a good job, it might actually be a barrier to achieving her change. I don’t recall her response at the time and I didn’t think much about it or hear anything from her until ten months later.

When I went to her classroom, she explained that she quit her job shortly after class and started her own business as a Spanish language interpreter. The business was even more successful than she anticipated and she was very happy. She credited the Lewin exercise for giving her the necessary insight and motivation to make a major change in her life. Needless to say, this is a story that I now share with classes to demonstrate the potential power of applying Lewin’s force-field analysis.