- 1 A 10-Minute Train Ride That Divides Lives
- 2 The Case Study: How Conviction Moves People
- 3 The P&I Framework Works Beyond Organizations
- 4 The Tipping Point: When “Gradually” Becomes “Suddenly”
- 5 The Dragonfly Effect and Viral Loops
- 6 Storytelling: The Most Practical Influence Skill
- 7 Kotodama: The Power That Only Genuine Words Possess
- 8 Applying Day 5’s Lessons in the IT Workplace
- 9 In Closing: What Is Your Kotodama?
- 10 Books Referenced in This Article
A 10-Minute Train Ride That Divides Lives
Day 5 of Globis MBA’s “Power and Influence” course opened with a striking theme: educational inequality in America.
I’ll admit, I tensed up at first. “Moving society” sounded like the domain of activists and politicians — far removed from my world as an IT manager. But as the session unfolded, that assumption was completely overturned. The mechanisms that drive social change turned out to be remarkably similar to the ones we use in organizational transformation and project management.
In this article, I’ll share the theories and practical takeaways from Day 5, connecting them to the realities of IT work and business leadership. This is the fifth installment in my “Power and Influence” series.
The Case Study: How Conviction Moves People
Day 5 centered on a case study about an individual who drove education reform in America. What made the story compelling was that this person wasn’t an education expert. They were driven by a powerful personal experience that crystallized into deep conviction — and that conviction produced extraordinary results.
We analyzed the entire process through the Power & Influence (P&I) framework we had been building throughout the course.
The P&I Framework Works Beyond Organizations
From Day 1 through Day 4, we had primarily studied influence within organizations — with bosses, peers, and direct reports. Day 5 posed a critical question: does this framework hold up outside the organization?
The answer is a resounding yes.
When we broke down the protagonist’s actions, they followed the core P&I process precisely. First, accurately assess the current situation. Then identify the key stakeholders. Next, understand what each stakeholder wants and fears. Finally, select and deploy the right influence tactics.
What fascinated me was how the case demonstrated Cialdini’s six principles of influence unfolding in a chain reaction. It started with reciprocity, which built authority, which generated social proof, which created scarcity, which fostered liking, and ultimately secured commitment.
This sequence might look calculated on the surface, but the foundation was genuine conviction. The techniques didn’t come first — the belief did. The influence tactics emerged naturally as a consequence of that belief.
This was the most important lesson of Day 5: Influence tactics ring hollow when deployed as mere technique. They only reach their full power when backed by genuine conviction.
Having spent 28 years in the IT industry, I’ve witnessed this firsthand. When pushing for adoption of new tools or processes, logical arguments alone — “efficiency will improve by X%,” “cost savings will be Y” — rarely move people. But when I spoke from genuine concern — “Our engineers are burning out under the current system, and I want to change that” — the response was visibly different.
The Tipping Point: When “Gradually” Becomes “Suddenly”
The second half of Day 5 introduced Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point theory.
A tipping point is the critical threshold where accumulated small changes suddenly trigger an explosive shift. This mechanism operates across all kinds of phenomena — the spread of epidemics, fashion trends, dramatic shifts in crime rates.
Gladwell identifies three essential elements for reaching a tipping point.
1. The Law of the Few
Change isn’t driven by the majority. It’s driven by a small number of people who play specific roles. Gladwell categorizes them into three types:
- Mavens: Information specialists who possess deep knowledge in a domain and love sharing it with others.
- Connectors: Social hubs who bridge different communities and networks.
- Salesmen: Persuaders who can convince people and inspire them to act.
When I heard this, I immediately recognized the “key person” structure in IT projects.
Think about a large-scale system implementation. You can hold briefing sessions for hundreds of end users and still struggle with adoption. But if a handful of trusted people on the ground say, “This actually works,” the tool spreads with remarkable speed.
When that group includes someone with deep technical knowledge (a Maven), someone with cross-departmental connections (a Connector), and someone who can casually persuade others to give it a try (a Salesman), you have exactly the conditions needed to cross the tipping point.
2. The Stickiness Factor
If a message doesn’t “stick,” it won’t spread from person to person. Stickiness means having enough impact to lodge in someone’s memory and change their behavior.
The class introduced six elements of a sticky message, which spell out SUCCESs:
- Simple: The core message is distilled to a single idea.
- Unexpected: It defies expectations and captures attention.
- Concrete: It paints a vivid picture rather than staying abstract.
- Credible: It’s backed by data or a proven track record.
- Emotional: It appeals to feelings, not just logic.
- Story: It’s delivered as a narrative.
When all six elements come together, the message sticks in the listener’s mind and gains the power to spread.
3. The Power of Context
The same message can have vastly different effects depending on when and where it’s delivered. The social climate, the state of an organization, the anxieties and hopes people carry — this “context” can either accelerate or block change.
In the Day 5 case, the protagonist acted at a time when public concern about education was already elevated. That tailwind helped push things past the tipping point.
The same applies to organizational change. Reading whether the moment is ripe — whether there’s a sense of “we need to change now” — can make or break a transformation effort. In my own career, I’ve seen reform proposals gain surprising traction right after a leadership change or a major incident, when the mood of “the status quo isn’t working” permeates the organization.
The Dragonfly Effect and Viral Loops
Beyond tipping point theory, the session introduced more actionable frameworks.
The Dragonfly Effect is a four-step model, named after the dragonfly’s four wings:
- Focus: Narrow down to one thing you want to change.
- Grab Attention: Draw people’s interest.
- Engage: Create emotional connection.
- Take Action: Prompt a specific, concrete action.
This framework isn’t limited to social movements. It works just as well for internal initiatives. Instead of saying “we need to change everything,” focus on one point. Show compelling data or a case study to grab attention. Help people feel it’s their problem too. Then lower the barrier to taking that first step.
The viral loop mechanism was equally striking. The concept is straightforward: when the viral coefficient exceeds 1 — meaning each user brings in more than one new user on average — growth becomes exponential. Below 1, the initiative fades away.
In the IT industry, this concept is familiar territory. It’s essentially the same principle behind product-led growth in SaaS. But reframing it in the context of organizational change or social movements opens up new perspectives.
For example, suppose you want to build a knowledge-sharing culture within your company. Sending out a directive — “Please share your knowledge” — won’t work. But if you create a system where people who share information receive feedback like “Your post saved me hours,” you generate intrinsic motivation. That’s how the viral coefficient crosses the threshold of 1.
Storytelling: The Most Practical Influence Skill
Of everything covered in Day 5, storytelling was the skill I most wanted to take back to work.
Throughout the Power and Influence course, the ability to “tell the story” was valued as highly as analytical rigor. Being logically correct isn’t enough to move people. You need the skill to deliver that correctness in a way that reaches the listener’s heart.
The V-Shape Pattern
The story structure taught in class was the V-shape pattern.
Start by describing the present situation. Then go back to the past — share a difficulty or setback. Return to the present and show how that past experience connects to where you are now. Finally, paint a vision of the future.
This structure is powerful because the audience walks through the “valley” alongside the storyteller. A story of struggle and recovery moves people far more than a tale of unbroken success.
The protagonist in the Day 5 case used exactly this pattern. Having experienced profound personal loss, they found their mission in social reform. That narrative had a visceral power to move listeners.
The V-shape pattern works in business settings too. In a project proposal, try framing it as: “We had this failure in the past. That experience revealed this problem. That’s why I’m convinced we need this initiative now.” Just that simple reframing transforms your persuasiveness.
The Six Elements of a Memorable Message
The SUCCESs framework I described earlier also serves as a core guide for storytelling.
Looking back at my career in IT, I realized the difference between proposals that get approved and those that don’t can be explained by these six elements.
Proposals that succeed distill the message to one point (Simple), contain a surprise — “Wait, really?” (Unexpected), include specific numbers and scenarios (Concrete), are backed by evidence (Credible), appeal to urgency or aspiration (Emotional), and flow as a coherent narrative (Story).
Proposals that fail try to cover too many points, contain no surprises, stay in the realm of abstractions, lack supporting evidence, appeal only to logic, and end up as a bullet-point list.
The difference often isn’t about the quality of the idea — it’s about how it’s communicated. The same content, restructured with the SUCCESs elements in mind, can land in a completely different way.
Kotodama: The Power That Only Genuine Words Possess
The concept that left the deepest impression from Day 5 was kotodama — the Japanese idea that words carry a spirit or life force of their own.
“Words spoken by someone who truly believes carry a power that resonates.”
Storytelling techniques can be learned. The V-shape pattern and SUCCESs framework can be understood intellectually and improved through practice. But no matter how skillfully you tell a story, if you don’t genuinely believe what you’re saying, your words won’t reach the listener’s heart.
The case protagonist’s words moved people not because of polished presentation skills, but because they had lived through profound personal experience and believed in their mission to their core. That conviction inhabited their words, giving them the force of kotodama.
This was positioned as the culmination of the four key takeaways from Day 5:
“The ability to reframe past setbacks into future hope is what gives birth to kotodama.”
Past failures and setbacks aren’t just wounds. When the experience of overcoming them is sublimated into the conviction of “that’s exactly why I want to do this,” your words gain an irreplaceable weight.
Reflecting on my own career, I’ve had my share of significant project failures. At the time, I was painfully aware of my own shortcomings, and it was a genuinely difficult period. But now, when I explain to junior colleagues why a particular process matters, those failures give my words an authenticity they wouldn’t otherwise have. Without those setbacks, my words might have remained nothing more than platitudes.
Applying Day 5’s Lessons in the IT Workplace
After the session, I was struck by how a sweeping theme like “moving society” connects directly to the everyday challenges we face at work. Here are the four key takeaways from Day 5:
1. P&I principles work at the societal level too
Exercising influence within an organization and driving social change operate on fundamentally the same mechanism. Identify your stakeholders, choose the right influence tactics, and act with conviction. This process doesn’t change whether you’re managing a project, transforming an organization, or reforming society.
2. Understand the chain reaction behind tipping points
Change doesn’t happen linearly. Work with a small number of key people, craft a sticky message, and read the timing. When these three conditions align, small changes can cascade into transformational shifts.
3. Master the art of storytelling
Simply being conscious of the V-shape pattern and the SUCCESs framework can dramatically change how the same content lands. This is the most immediately actionable lesson — one you can start using tomorrow.
4. Kotodama is born from reframing past setbacks
Beyond technique lies something deeper. Words carry power precisely because you believe in them. The ability to reconstruct past failures into future hope is what gives a leader’s words their weight.
In Closing: What Is Your Kotodama?
After Day 5, I found myself reflecting: what is my own kotodama?
Twenty-eight years in the IT industry. I’ve experienced both project triumphs and failures. Now in my fifties, studying for an MBA, I’ve come to realize that the experiences I’ve accumulated throughout my career — especially the failures and setbacks — have become a story uniquely my own.
“Technology exists to make people’s lives better.” That, I believe, is my core conviction. The most cutting-edge technology and the most elegant system are meaningless if the people using them aren’t better off. Having lived through projects that failed precisely because they prioritized technology over people, this isn’t an abstract ideal for me — it’s something I’ve felt in my bones.
The Power and Influence course expanded its scope in Day 5 to encompass “moving society.” Day 6 will be the final session. I’m looking forward to seeing how all the lessons come together.
