Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 03

T rying to change somebody else’s mind can be an everyday challenge in gov- ernment. First colleagues, as ideas and options are considered. Then superi- ors, perhaps even the minister. And finally the public. Mostly, we do it wrong. “We persuade and cajole and pressure and push,” as Wharton School professor Jonah Berger observes in his book The Catalyst . But even after all that strenuous effort, often nothing changes. People remain steadfast. That shouldn’t be a surprise. When you are pushed, how do you respond? Similarly, they dig in their heels and perhaps get irritated. It backfires. But our instinct, next time, is to apply the same tac- tic – push, push, push. Instead, Berger says we need to learn from chem- istry. Left to itself, chemical change can take eons – algae and plankton turning into oil, for example, or carbon being gradually squeezed into dia- monds. To facilitate change, chemists will use cata- lysts, special substances that lower the barriers to change. They alter the situation so it’s easier for chemical bonds to splinter and rearrange. Change happens -- with less energy. So instead of pushing harder or trying to present a more convincing argument – and leading people to increase their defences – try to remove road- blocks and lower the barriers that keep them from taking action. Become a catalyst. “Unfortunately, when it comes to trying to cre- ate change, people rarely think about removing roadblocks. When asked how to change someone’s mind, 99 per cent of the answers focus on some version of pushing. ‘Present facts and evidence,’ ‘explain my reasons,’ and ‘convince them’ are com- mon refrains,” he writes in The Catalyst . “Sometimes change doesn’t require more horse- power. Sometimes we just need to unlock the park- ing brake.” That involves understanding the five main road- blocks and figuring out how to unlock the parking brake in each case. The first roadblock is the likelihood that when people are pushed they will push back: Reactance, as he calls it. People have an innate anti-persuasion system. Indeed, one of the most significant, per- verse results is that warnings become recommen- dations. Alcohol prevention messages have led col- lege students to drink more. Jurors told to disregard inadmissible evidence might weigh it more heavily. The warnings boomerang because people have a need for freedom – autonomy and agency. They want to control their own lives. “In fact, choice is so important that people prefer it even when it makes them worse off,” he says. You therefore have to allow people to feel their own autonomy and agency to choose the change you propose. Get them to persuade themselves. In Florida, for example, 30,000 teens quit smoking not after government told them to cease but after it ran “truth” ads, such as one in which a magazine execu- tive tells a teenager tobacco ads are accepted for publication because he’s in the business of making money. Outraged, the teens decided to quit of their own volition. One way to provide agency is to let people pick the path they prefer from a menu of choices. Anoth- er way is to ask questions rather than make state- ments – instead of arguing with you, they have to figure out the answer to the questions you pose. An- other approach is to highlight a gap – a disconnect between their thoughts and actions, or a disparity between what they might recommend for others and what they do themselves. “Before people will change, they have to be will- ing to listen. They have to trust the person they’re communicating with. And until that happens, no amount of persuasion is going to work,” he says. The second obstacle is people’s attachment to the status quo. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? People tend to buy the same brands they always have and do- nate to the same causes they’ve always supported. After heart bypass surgery or angioplasty to widen arteries people are told repeatedly by physicians to change their diets and lifestyles but only 10 per cent actually do. The Catalyst By Jonah Berger, Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $17.99 (Kindle version) 24 / Canadian Government Executive // May/June 2020 The Leader’s Bookshelf By Harvey Schachter The Catalyst