How to Influence People, 2nd Edition

Foreword

The business world does not have an information problem! We are one Google click away from a lifetime of information about any topic we can think of. We have more information than we can possibly need, in fact we are drowning in it. What we have is an implementation problem. I see this in the business world every day. We have meetings where people spend an hour saying nothing tangible and everyone walks out and things stay the same. People go to conferences see amazing speakers, have insightful brainstorming sessions, yet go back to work and forget all of it after dealing with 530 emails.

Approximately 76 per cent of all change efforts in organisations fail and 65 per cent of all strategy is never actioned. The reality is people don’t implement the things they learn: they just keep following the same behaviour patterns over and over again. Why? Most of the information we receive requires us to break it down and make it relevant and we are simply too busy and tired to do this.

I first saw Chris Helder when he was running a full-day workshop on influence and sales. I was immediately struck by his facilitation skills and masterful use of comedy. However, as I watched him present I was stunned by his ability to take concepts, break them down into first principles so that they became practical and easy to implement. He gave the group a suite of tools that they could walk out of the room and implement the very next day. They didn’t need to have more meetings or do more ...