PE 15: Make It Happen

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Everything we’ve talked about so far in this series on persuasive communication psychology is just a means to an end, and that end is making something actually happen. Somebody buys, somebody acts, something changes. Even when you have wholehearted agreement, you haven’t until they’ve followed through.[1] As Alfred Adler said, “Life happens at the level of events, not words.”

How many times have you walked out of a meeting with someone with a clear sense that everybody is on board and knows what to do, and after time passes nothing has happened? How many times has initial enthusiasm fizzled out? Frustrating, isn’t it? What’s WRONG with those people?

It happens all the time, but before you get angry that others don’t follow through on their agreements, think about how many times you’ve broken agreements with yourself. For example, have you set goals that you did not achieve—not because you were incapable but because you didn’t really try? If you made New Year’s resolutions for 2018,  how’s that working out for you?  Do you ever procrastinate? In some ways, maybe it’s a miracle when someone else actually follows through on their agreements!

So the key is not to get angry about it and give people a hard time or continue to hound them until things get done, but to understand why there’s a gap between decision and execution, and use that knowledge in your approach to maximize your chances of seeing the behavior and action you seek.

What keeps people from acting on agreements?

Persuasive communication is a vehicle for making things happen, and every vehicle needs two things to do its job: motive power and direction. Everything we’ve covered so far deals with the motivation, so I’m going to address the direction part as the major antidote to inaction. Three principal reasons people don’t follow through on agreements is that they may be uncommitted, unable, or uncertain.

Uncommitted

First, despite telling you they agree, they may be lying or at least not telling the full truth.  Maybe they’re too nice and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Maybe they’re afraid to openly disagree because you’re the boss or prevailing opinion is against them.  Maybe they even hope you will fail for whatever reasons of their own they might have. Or maybe they kind of agree but still have nagging doubts. Sometimes Gut-level Gus prefers to just keep quiet and bide his time for the right moment—when it’s time to do something.

Unable

Even if they have the best intentions and confidence at the moment, they could find themselves unwilling or unable to do what they have to do when the time comes. Unwilling is when you tell yourself that you’re going to wake up an hour early and get a workout in before work, only to “reconsider” your plans when the alarm goes off. What’s going on is a chronological goal mismatch: the sure short term pain of waking up now is a lot more pressing on your mind than the long term promise of being fit at some undetermined future time. The unable part comes when they run into an unexpected obstacle and can’t or won’t muster up the will to take it on or figure it out.

Uncertain

One of the most common and easily solvable reasons for procrastination and excuse-making is uncertainty about what to do. I feel this myself many times when I sit down to write and churn out my goal of 1,000 words a day. When I’m not sure what I want to write about, it’s so much harder to get started. Ambiguity causes anxiety and anxiety tends to default toward the status quo.

How to drive action

To attack these three action-stoppers you must:

• Be sure you have full agreement.
• Make it hard for them to not act
• Make it easy for them to take the action you want

Be sure you have full agreement

It’s tempting to assume things are going well, and it takes a strong person to invite objections, but sweeping disagreement under the rug only guarantees that you will trip over it later. If they don’t agree, better to find out early so you can address it. There are a couple of ways to do this.

The first is to be very clear up front what your ask is. A lot of speakers fear to do this to avoid provoking disagreement, and there’s something to be said for using your discretion if you know they will automatically oppose your idea. But being clear about your ask up front is a great way to find out early where you stand.

Second, ask checking questions to see if they have any concerns; pay close attention to their reaction and invite them to open up about their concerns. If you’re the boss, make it safe for people to speak openly; one way to do this is, bring up specific objections if you think they’re holding back, to show it’s OK to talk about them.

If  those fail, you can be more direct and tell them that if you don’t hear objections, you’re going to assume you have complete agreement.

Make it hard for them not to act

As we’ve seen, at the moment of truth it’s so easy to find reasons not to act, so you want to harder for them not to follow through.

Get individuals to commit publicly to act, which increases compliance in two ways. First, it puts their credibility at risk if they change their minds and don’t come through and second, it taps into the Cialdini’s consistency principle. But make sure that they commit to something specific, which I cover in the next section.

Anticipate obstacles and plan for them. If you make the road ahead sound easy, you may get quicker agreement but run into problems later. Planning for obstacles makes it much likelier that they will follow through, because their minds are prepared for them.

Put them in control of their commitment. Most of us hate to be sold, even if we don’t mind buying, so do everything you can to make it the other person’s idea to do what you want them to do.

As strange as it might sound, sometimes it helps to make it harder to decide but easier to act once they have decided. Making an effort up front deepens commitments, which is why elite organizations have difficult initiation rituals. Instead of trying so hard to make the decision a no-brainer, we should get them to put skin in the game.

Make it easy for them to act

If you want someone to stay on the path you’ve set, make it effortless by making the path well-marked and smooth as possible.

Make it clear

Your listeners must be absolutely clear about what you’re asking them to do. This starts with being clear in your own mind about your purpose and specific actions before you go in.

Specificity is major ingredient of clarity. There’s a great example in Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath. Donald Berwick, CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in  on December 14, 2004 told a room full of hospital administrators that their goal was to save 100,000 lives by 6/14/06, at 9AM. More prosaically, it’s like the difference between saying “let’s do lunch sometime” and “how about next Tuesday at Anthony’s?”

When asking someone to take action, you walk a tightrope: on the one hand, people don’t like being micro-managed, but on the other hand, they are more likely to follow through on clear behaviors. The best way to square this circle is to ask them for their plan and only then make suggestions as you see fit.

So, for example, instead of recommending that you to be clearer in their recommendations, I might suggest that you word your ask in specific and measurable outcomes that a high school sophomore could understand and repeat back to you.

Make it easy

One of the major contributors to the success of Amazon was its development and patenting of one-click ordering in 1997. You may not be able to make it that easy for others to act, but you should strive as much as possible to reduce barriers to action. Chip and Dan Heath call this tactic “shrinking the change”.

You can also shrink the change by breaking things up into small steps which are easier to accomplish. That can help you get things moving and then the power of commitment and constancy will keep the momentum going.

Finally, always close with a call to action. Here’s mine: as soon as possible, write down the three things you are going to do differently in your next presentation to ensure that others will act.

[1] One exception: If it’s simply compliance you’re aiming for, such as permission to proceed and approval of resources, you can stop right here.