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>> John Daly: [Applause] Good evening.
My name is John Daly.
I've taught here a long time.
I teach a couple of classes.
One is an undergraduate class called Interpersonal Communication.
One is a graduate class called Advocacy and we're going to focus on advocacy tonight.
Advocacy is about how you successfully sell ideas.
How many of you understand good ideas go nowhere if you can't sell those ideas?
Everything in this room was once an idea and there was competition between the idea that came into existence and other ideas.
There is, if you will, a politics of ideas in any organization.
There's a politics of ideas in families as well when you think about it, right.
A mistake we make sometimes we think an idea is absolutely obvious.
Well, of course, we should adopt this idea.
In truth we know that doesn't happen.
Regrettably sometimes bad ideas go far and good ideas falter.
Indeed, history is filled with ideas that had to be fought for.
How many of you use Post-It notes, for example?
3-M interestingly didn't like Post-It notes.
How many of you use a PC sometimes?
How many understand lots of people didn't like the PC initially?
Every idea we use today had to be sold initially and I've spent a lot of time over the last 5-10 years studying what it takes to be a very successful advocate for your ideas.
Now in truth there are bad ideas, but I've been assured by the university that no one allowed in this room has any bad ideas, because all the tools we're going to talk
about tonight could easily be used to sell bad ideas as much as good ideas.
So, I've been told all of you only have good ideas so we're going to focus on what do you need to do to successfully sell that idea?
Just a few points given in the time we have.
Number one: You have to know what matters to decision makers.
You got to know who your decision makers are.
Truth is we make a mistake sometimes.
I work with people.
I say who gets to say yes or no to this.
And I'm always amazed by how few people can actually tell me who decides.
The obvious answer is one thing.
That person decides.
But how many of you recognize far more people can say no than can say yes to any idea?
We talk about decision makers.
We need to know not only who can say yes, but who can also slow the idea down, who can stop the idea even though they can't say yes?
In families the same thing, who's the decision maker?
Everyone says well he's in charge.
How many of you understand many a husband goes to the store to buy a nice Porsche and comes home with a minivan?
How did that ever happen, alright?
[Laughter] You know any parent who understands you've spent more time at McDonald's than you ever wanted to simply because guess what, the real decision maker was the kid.
Beyond that though you got to know what matters to the decision maker and we've done a lot of research about what appeals to decision makers.
One thing we discovered is people like to be like other people.
It's a very simple thing.
Who has teenagers?
Alright, your teenager says to you I'm an independent person.
I don't do it under peer pressure; it doesn't exist.
Yet when you pick them up from high school you can't tell which is yours from behind because they all dress exactly the same.
One thing we understand, good advocates do, is they understand what matters to decision makers and more particularly who are the normative people?
We like to talk about this in a very simple for.
In organizations, for example, leaders have what we call lust organizations, organizations they deeply admire and would be more like to be.
So, for example, the University of Texas has some universities we deeply admire.
If I wanted to appeal to the President to adopt an idea, I'd bring up those organizations.
If that school does it, we should do it too.
So, let's give it some historical moments.
Six Sigma is a process analysis technique used by companies, alright.
The first company to do was Allied Signal and that's not a bad company.
Then Motorola did it.
That's a good company too and it got a little traction, but about 1996 General Electric said we're going to do Six Sigma and at that point every company in the world said we need
to do it also, because General Electric at that point was the ultimate lust organization in American businesses.
Footnote: There are also disgust organizations, organizations your leaders deeply despise and think are stupid.
You never bring them up because that's going to actually kill your idea rather than help your idea.
So, you need to know who decides and you know who matters to the decision makers.
[Background Music] But we're going to take a break real briefly and we'll be back in a minute to talk about a four-step model of persuasion.
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