How to Change Anyone's Mind

By Jonah Berger | February 21, 2020/Wall Street Journal

Summary:Everyone has something they want to change. Employees want to change their bosses' minds, and leaders want to transform organizations. Salespeople want to win new clients, and startups want to revolutionize industries. But change is hard. We pressure and coax and cajole, and often nothing moves. Could there be a better way? When trying to change minds or organizations, we often default to a particular approach: pushing. Boss not listening to that new idea? Send them another PowerPoint deck. When people are asked how they've tried to change someone's mind, my own research finds that the overwhelming majority of the answers focus on some version of pushing. The intuition comes from physics. If you're trying to move a chair, pushing usually works. Push it in one direction and it tends to go that way. Unfortunately, people aren't like chairs; they often push back. Instead, it helps to look to chemistry, where there's a proven way to make change happen fast: Add a catalyst.

Assignment: Answer the following question and reply to at least one other classmate's post:

Research on everything from investment choices to political incumbency demonstrates that people are over-attached to the status quo, what social scientists call the "endowment effect."

Why is the status quo so attractive to individuals and why is it a significant obstacle for leaders?