The Psychology of Influence

Change is one of the few constants for every organization today. What are some of the key challenges it presents?

One of the challenges — especially for organizations that have been successful — is just that: they have been successful. They’ve learned certain routines and they continue to go back to them. As a result, they engage only in incremental change. That works well when the world itself is changing incrementally, but in many industries today, that is not the case. As a result, we’ve got to un-learn what has worked for us in the past, and that requires developing new mental models and an understanding of how the world works — how all the pieces fit together.

The core of the challenge is getting away from a mindset of inertia and recognizing that, while tomorrow might look similar to today, 10 days from now, 100 days from now and 1,000 days from now will certainly not look the same in most sectors. We have to be prepared to work differently, think differently and develop new models.

For many years you have used the film Twelve Angry Men as a case study in your classes. What are some of its key lessons?

This is a wonderful film from 1957 that was written by a starving playwright who had sat on a jury for a few