Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition

by Joseph Grenny

What do you predict would result from the following strategy? You tell every military officer, “Look, we’re now tracking reports of sexual harassment and assault. Your job is to make that number go down in your unit.” The number will drop. You give your senior military leaders a serious command, and they will move heaven and earth to “make it happen.” But if the number drops, it won’t necessarily be good news. If it’s true that as many as 90 percent of assaults go unreported, then the first sign of making progress might be that the number actually goes up. An increase could mean that you’ve made it safer to speak up and then go get help. Assaults are decreasing, but more are being reported more frequently so, in the net, the number increases. But how can you know whether the increase is good news because reporting has gone up or bad news because the actual incidents have increased? By measuring the real target you need to change: people’s thoughts and actions. A useful measure would tell you (unit by unit) how safe people feel. It would tell you (1) if they feel safe from harassment or assault and (2) if they feel safe reporting harassment or assault. If you gather these numbers frequently, you’re in a much stronger position to properly interpret an increase or decrease in reported assaults. Which, to their credit, is why the Army is currently revisiting what they’ll measure and how they’ll measure it as they work feverishly to resolve this horrendous problem.