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July / August 2010
Volume 22, Number 4

IMAGINE THAT TWO PEOPLE HAVE BEEN GIVEN the task. The task is this: One person’s fist is clenched shut, and the second person must open it. What’s the best way to solve that dilemma, the best way to persuade that fist to open up?

Many people will turn to the partner and try to force the hand open, causing the other person to clench the fist tighter. According to John Daly, a communications professor at the University of Texas who visited TAC’s County Management Institute in May to discuss the science behind persuasion, that’s probably not the best or simplest solution.

“How many of you turned to your partners and said, ‘will you please open your first?’” Daly asked a class of county officials and employees who had just been asked to choose a partner. “Look, why not ask? What’s the worst they are going to say? No. But they might just say yes.”

Of course, most of Daly’s presentation was about how to convince those who would say ‘no’ to say ‘yes,’ via the use of national political debates and popular business decisions.

For example, when President Barack Obama first tried to convince Americans that now is the time to create a universal health care system, his message fell flat. Despite his ability to lead a new generation of voters with strong and inspiring Yes-We-Can campaign speeches, and despite gaining his fellow Democrats’ respect for his understanding of policy, many felt his health care proposal was unconvincing and unnecessary, too complicated and muddled by his opponents.

Without delving into the politics of Obama’s proposal, Daly discussed where the man with the plan went wrong, and how local officials can use those lessons when advocating their own ideas and solutions to their elected colleagues, employees and the public.

First, Obama may have rested too much on the success of his presidential campaign, during which he promised his supporters universal health care. Once in the presidency, Obama took support for granted and failed to convince his opponents and the middle class that the need for universal health care existed, at least at first.

“Obama’s biggest weakness in selling the healthcare campaign is he failed to create a need among the donor class. Understand, there is a lot of people in this world, but there is somebody we call the donor class, people who donate to politics who are generally well off who have good health insurance,” Daly said. “If you want to know the secret of getting someone to change, it’s really simple. Create enough pain, they will change. How many of your lives are quite good right now? Who has a good life? Why fool with your life? If it gets painful enough, you will make a change.”

In fact, conveying need plays such an important role in acceptance of a related solution, idea or plan that, persuasively speaking, communicating the plan itself becomes secondary.

“If I had been advising Obama on this issue … every day for 90, 100, 120 days, I’d float around an article about something horrible that is happening to somebody in America because they don’t have health insurance or it let them down,” Daly said. “I would have a story every day, so all over America at some point somebody would say, ‘there is something screwed up, don’t know what it is, but there is something screwed up.’ Then you could offer a plan. But what happened is he got seduced by Republicans and other people into talking about the plan right away before he created a need.”

Locally elected officials can fall into the same trap: they make promises and express ideas prior to being elected, and then assume that election of the person and election of the idea are the same thing. They’ll dive into office and begin promoting the solution or the idea without first focusing on the need for the solution, or they will see a problem arising, work for months or a year or two years on a solution or proposal, and tell residents about the proposal without stopping first to visually or emotionally communicate the need.

“Just getting elected doesn’t mean the idea will get adopted. You’ve got to market that idea within the county, to the commissioners, and by the way, you’ve got to market it to staff, too,” Daly said.

“You’ve got to play the politics without looking like a politician.”

Timing is a significant component of need; an idea will have difficulty capturing support if the main question supporters address is “why?” and not “why now?” The question is particularly important when gathering support for financially challenging projects, such as the building of a new jail, the construction of a new road or highway, or when acquiring park land.

“Anything important in your life, you have a ‘why now’ associated with. Why did you change jobs now, why didn’t you wait another year? Why did you decide to move? Why did you retire?

There is always a why now,” Daly said, adding that population and demography shifts, technological advances and natural disasters are all examples of why an idea or plan should move forward now and not later. “Why should the county do it this year, rather than wait till next year, and if we could have done it three years ago, why should we worry about it now?”

Usually, there are any number of reasons a solution or idea should be picked up now, and they are countered with reasons to wait. But ultimately, Daly said, there may be a stronger pull toward doing than not doing, if the case can be made that something may not be possible later.

“People fear regret more than they are excited by opportunity,” he said. “When you are pitching a proposal, there is a cost for not investing. If we don’t do it now, we won’t have the budget in the future. If we don’t do it now, the political climate will change. If we don’t do it now, we won’t have the bond rating we have at this point. We’re not going to have another chance. And that becomes massively persuasive. For Obama’s healthcare campaign, what finally sold the Democrats is what? We’re not going to have the majority in all likelihood nine months from now, so we either do it now or we won’t get another chance for 30 years. Obama really sold that to the Democrats.”

Ultimately, whether an idea is successful may depend on how thoroughly supporters and opponents have analyzed and recognized the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with a plan or solution.

“Strengths and weaknesses operate inside your organization. Opportunities and threats are outside the organization,” Daly said. “Let’s suppose you want to float a bond right now. Why should we do it right now?

Strengths inside the organization: we could actually have the legal power and the financial power to do it right now. We’re in good shape to do it. What’s a weakness right now? Inside, politically it’s going to change real quick inside so we better get it done right now if it’s going to happen. The biggest (opportunity) outside: the bond market is really good rates right now. A year from now, they may not be. … What’s a threat? If we don’t do it now, somebody else will take responsibility and God knows they will want to create a toll road.”

But threats and opportunities aren’t always straightforward or obvious; sometimes, something that may at first appear to be a threat or weakness can be turned into an opportunity or strength.

Needs are opportunities, and so are recessions, which many companies use to take chances or make changes they would not ordinarily attempt when times are good.

“You sometimes have to wait until things get really bad to push a radical idea,” Daly said.

Whatever the desired chance or the change is, once it’s been established and agreed upon that there’s a problem or need to change and a plan or solution has been proposed, a persuasive case must be made for its implementation. But persuasion is in the eye of the beholder. Different audiences demand different approaches and are looking for different information, Daly said.

Audiences that somewhat removed from the plan, proposal or change generally only want to hear about the benefits of the plan: broad, general pieces of positive information. Only those that are heavily involved in the problem and implementation want to hear about the plan’s features, which are more specific and detailed.

“If you give only benefits to people who want the features as well, you’re slippery. If you give features to people who do not care you’re boring,” Daly said. “So you’ve got to assess the environment, but in every case, show people the benefit before we start talking about features.”

Unfortunately in some cases, most people are more interested in immediate or short-term benefits than long-term benefits. “Every time you pitch a proposal, you’ve got to find something so that you can say, tomorrow morning things will be different because we adopted this plan,” Daly said.

The ‘audience’ can generally be divided into four groups of people according to the person’s attitude and knowledge base, he added, each of which should be approached differently: cynics, followers, cheerleaders and adversaries. Cynics are those who can hate an idea without knowing anything about it. Followers are people who love an idea without knowing anything about it. Cheerleaders love the idea and deeply understand the idea.

“With cynics, you simply work around them,” Daly said, whereas followers simply need to be educated and cheerleaders need to be cultivated. “A mistake all of us make is we ignore our cheerleaders at our peril and get sucked in by whom? Cynics. Cynics are like quicksand. The more you struggle, the more you’re going to drown.” Adversaries, though, are people who both dislike an idea and deeply understand the idea. Unlike a cynic, they are capable of and open to changing their minds, but only when they feel like they’ve received enough information and data to do so.

“Evidence and data only affect one group of people,” Daly said. “Adversaries.”

No matter who the audience is, preparation is key and talking points are helpful. But many people fall short because they only prepare their own talking points; they don’t stop and think about how to respond to an opponent’s talking points. Benefits are talking points, as are vivid, personal examples of why a proposal is needed. Another talking point should be something to prove the plan’s feasibility, preferably via demonstration, example or some convincing numerical analysis.

“Numbers mean nothing to people unless you give them a visual equivalency,” Daly said.

Other talking points should respond directly to any predictable opposing points. “If you’re proposing something, spend more time thinking about objections than thinking about why you want to do it. The mistake we make is when we want to present something, we spend hours preparing our slides, writing our proposal up, and we spend five minutes, at best, thinking about how people might object to it. Really smart people actually do the exact opposite. They spend more time thinking about objections,” Daly said. “The measure of your competency is not your ability to pitch a proposal, but your ability to respond to other people’s questions.”

The best responses are those that can turn a negative attribute into a positive attribute, and those that respond not just to primary questions but to secondary questions. Think of an objection that can be raised, and then the response to that objection, and then the response to the response, and respond to that. “Use every question and objection as a way to further your case. Never answer yes or no, say, ‘yes, and let me tell you why,’” Daly said.

One last aspect of the talking points is that eventually, the plan or proposal will probably be labeled by someone or something, so generating a positive label upfront can help cut off the power and influence of negative labeling before it starts.

“Any great idea gets a label attached to it, and the label becomes the shorthand for the idea,” Daly said, adding that the most persuasive labels are those that use keywords or key ideas that everyone can jump on board with, such as transparency, sustainability, continuity, safety, quality.

Of course, it’s possible someone can be overly persuasive, to the county’s detriment. Counties can become financially victimized by some persuasive techniques, and it’s important for officials to recognize those techniques, whether they are subconsciously using them or actively trying to overcome them. Daly called one such technique the “almost done” or “sunk hole” argument.

“The ‘almost done’ strategy is a very powerful way of selling things,” he warned, telling a story about a West Texas oil company that starts drilling a hole in the ground, looking for oil. They dig and dig, but don’t find anything. The company has put $1 million into the project, though, so the decision is made not to quit, but to keep digging, deeper and deeper. Millions of dollars and several decisions later, they still have nothing to show for it. “Look, just because you’ve been in a job for eight years is not a rationale to stay in the job. But what happened? There comes a point in any process, any development of any idea, that the urge to get it finished matters more than whether it’s reasonable or not.

“Good money after bad is a real problem,” he added. “Stop.”