Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition

by Joseph Grenny

Every year over 3,000 Americans drown, many of them in public pools. This problem remained unchanged for decades until a team of tenacious leaders from the YMCA and Redwoods Insurance got serious about influence. It wasn’t long before they had reduced the portion of these 3,000 deaths that happened at YMCA pools by two-thirds. How did they do it? They studied tragedies and successes until they found one vital (high-leverage) behavior that made the difference. They discovered that traditional lifeguards were spending much of their time greeting members, adjusting swim lanes, picking up kickboards, and testing pool chemicals. (Doesn’t sound much like life guarding, does it?) However, when lifeguards do 10-10 scanning, drowning rates drop immediately. This means that a lifeguard stands in a special spot and scans her section of the pool every 10 seconds, then offers assistance to anyone who might be in trouble within 10 seconds. Simple. And it yields incredibly high leverage. Kevin Trapani and his colleagues at Redwoods Insurance and YMCAs across the world have spared scores of families from devastating loss of life by identifying and implementing one vital behavior that has made all the difference.