Introduction
When you need to influence the behavior of one or more people, it’s important to identify who you need to influence, what their current behavior is (that you need to change), and why they’re doing it. When these are clear in your mind, you’ll be able to make an influence plan.
Analysis
The analysis is done by asking and answering the questions below.
Who is the target audience?
If you don’t already know, this is the time to figure it out. For example, profits have been decreasing the last two quarters and it’s looking like a trend. Who do you need to influence? Do the marketers need to do better at building demand? Do the salespeople need to do better at closing? Does the operations team need to do better at delivering the product so customers are satisfied and don’t ask for a refund? Does the customer support team need to do better with answering customer inquiries and asking for referrals? Does the technology team need to figure out how to decrease expenses? Do managers across the company need to increase productivity? Do employees across the company need more inspiration and motivation?
You may end up with more than one target audience. In that case, you need to do a separate cause and effect analysis for each one, and a separate influence plan for each one. Remember that the target audience needs to have the power to make the change you need.
What is their current behavior?
How is the target audience behaving currently? Do not mistake performance for behavior. Performance is the outcome of behavior. If you’re thinking of a target audience with poor performance, the next step is to think about what behaviors cause that poor performance.
What are the causes of this behavior?
There might be external and internal conditions that cause the behavior.
External conditions can be situations or forces contributing to the target audience’s behavior. When thinking about external conditions, they are conditions external to the target audience — not necessarily external to your company. A mid-level manager might have an external condition that is caused by executives. An employee might have an external condition that is a law or regulation they must follow. Sometimes the external conditions can be addressed directly (as in the case of a mid-level manager) and sometimes they are a constraint (as in a law or regulation).
An external condition can be related to the economy, politics, society, culture, the environment, climate, government, security, management, customers, vendors, etc.
Internal conditions are the mental and physical conditions that cause the behavior. For example, a manager might have an attitude that only winning matters. That attitude might cause the manager to mistreat their employees, causing good employees to leave and remaining employees to have lower morale, which then makes overall performance worse, which puts more pressure on that manager, who may blame the remaining employees, and continues the mistreatment of employees. Another example is an employee may have a mental health condition related to anxiety or stress, and needs a calm environment to work, produces excellent work in the right conditions, but shuts down when under a lot of pressure.
An internal condition can be physical or mental. Physical is any condition related to health or movement that can be diagnosed by a doctor. Mental is any condition related to health or function that can be diagnosed by a mental health professional such as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or clinical social worker. A mental condition can be a reaction to an experience or event or physical condition. Attitudes, values, and beliefs are part of a person’s mental condition. Some physical, mental, or spiritual conditions are obvious and can be observed by anyone, some aren’t. Don’t assume that there isn’t a condition just because you don’t see it.
Note that the word “condition” here is does not have an implied meaning of “good” or “bad”, it is merely describing what “is”.
What are the effects of the behavior on the target audience?
Start with what you already noticed. For example, if you are analyzing this target audience because of poor performance, that’s already one effect of the behavior that you know about. And there may be more effects. Ask the following questions:
What are the positive consequences of this behavior for the target audience? Those positive consequences for the target audience may correspond to negative consequences for the larger organization, but to answer this question you need to consider it from the target audience’s perspective. Is the target audiences being rewarded in some way for the behavior? For example, financial gain, increased power or privilege, satisfaction of revenge, recognition, etc.
Categories of positive consequences (for the target audience) include ability to escape or avoid something harmful or undesirable (to them), access to tangible benefits, justice or revenge, power and control, acceptance or affiliation with a group.
What are the negative consequences of this behavior for the target audience? These could be consequences that have already happened or consequences that could happen or will happen in the future.
Categories of negative consequences (for the target audience) include financial loss, imprisonment, risk of injury or death, separation from family or another group important to the target audience, loss of privilege or power, or exile.
What are the direct effects of the behavior on other people?
These are direct consequences of the behavior that affect other people. For example, if a manager is being wasteful with their spending, the company might end up with a loss, which could mean that some people can’t be paid and must be separated, so some people will lose their jobs.
What are the indirect effects of the behavior for the target audience?
The indirect effects are also sometimes called secondary consequences. These could be additional consequences for the target audience that result from the direct consequences. For example, if the target audience is behaving criminally, one direct consequence could be imprisonment, and an indirect consequence could be financial loss due to being separated from the job (because they can’t show up to work while imprisoned) and having to pay for a legal defense, and another indirect consequence could be losing their home (because they can’t pay the rent or mortgage or taxes due to the imprisonment and financial loss), and separation from their family (due to imprisonment and possible divorce).
What are the indirect effects of the behavior on other people?
These are secondary consequences for other people that happen as a result of the target audience’s behavior. Continuing the criminal activity example, if the target audience is imprisoned and can’t pay their rent or mortgage, that might affect their family because they might be evicted, the children may stop being interested in school or a career because of trouble at home, which could then affect the course of their entire lives.
Is the behavior being reinforced?
Positive consequences make the behavior more likely to happen again. Positive consequences include the gain of something tangible like assets or intangible like praise, and also the avoidance of criticism or the avoidance of injury or death or the avoidance of other bad situations. Some people call the gains positive reinforcement and the avoidance of losses or injuries negative reinforcement, but both forms of reinforcement are still reinforcement, and they are reinforcement because they are positive consequences for the target audience.
Negative consequences make the behavior less likely to happen again. Negative consequences include criticism, injury, and other losses. A lack of negative consequences, or the existence of negative consequences that are minor compared to the positive consequences, makes it easier to benefit from the positive consequences and reinforce the behavior.
In general, behavior that is reinforced will continue. Reinforcement happens when there are immediate positive consequences for the behavior and lack of immediate negative consequences for the behavior, or that the positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences.
Immediate consequences have more influence on a person than long-term consequences.
Certain consequences have more impact on a person than potential consequences. If a person is considering doing something bad, knowing that they will be caught and punished has more of an inhibiting effect than thinking there is a high potential for being caught and punished, which has more of an inhibiting effect than thinking there is a low potential for being caught and punished, which has more of an inhibiting effect than assuming that they won’t be caught or punished.