Speaking

[Matt Silverman, international speaker, best-selling author, CEO The Blueprint Organization]: What leaders often don’t realize is they already have the people within their organization to help them. You’re at an organization, a community, a company. You’re a leader within that organization, and you’ve got a message that you want to get out there. We have a program. We have a policy. We have an initiative. We have something that we want to do. We have a culture that we want to create. And we tell people, go forth and be ethical. Go forth and value safety. People don’t know how to implement those things. How do we actually implement the things that we’re trying to do? I’ve been working in the corporate world for about 20 years now. I always pause there for a big round of applause. I never get one. That’s okay. [audience laughter] I’ve worked in organizations that are trying to develop cultures and haven’t been able to do it in the traditional ways. And we assume that if we set the right tone, if we have the right mission statements, if we say the right things on paper, on policies and procedures, they follow along, they listen. That’s not how people work. That’s not the psychology of human behavior. Instead of trying to change everybody’s mind all at once through a policy, through an email, through an announcement at a leadership meeting, through tone at the top, you’ve got to find your champions. At The Blueprint Organization, we help you to build your Champions Network, a network of people within your organization who understand the message that you’re trying to spread. You start with a small group that’s enthusiastic about change, and then you utilize them to spread those out at the local level and regional level until it spreads throughout the organization. People trust their colleagues, their friends, their coworkers. They look to what those people around them are doing at the local level, and then they copy those behaviors. Now, no one likes to think of themselves as a sheep. But here’s the truth. Human beings in general are sheep.
[John Waters, Waters Business Consulting]: I was really impressed. We work with a lot of clients and his material will be impactful. The psychology around culture.
[Matt Silverman]: If you have a good idea, use human psychology to your advantage. We call it The Blueprint Organization because there’s really a blueprint for how to build a champions network.
[Erick Lashley, Business Process Leader]: He gave us some great tools today to actually use strategy and how to effectively do it.
[Matt Silverman]: How do you actually create metrics, ways to measure that change?
[David Metzler, CEO Phoenix Strategy Group]: I texted my team and said, we got to talk about who’s going to be champions. It was one of the best, well laid out topics I’ve seen in a long, long time.
[Nicole, Archsol]: No matter how far along a company is, big or small…
[Doug Singer, Viaone Commercial Real Estate]: …we’re all working to build Champion Networks.
[Matt Silverman]: You don’t need to convince everybody all at once. We can see how much we influence other people just through our own actions. A change in behavior, a change in best practices, a change in culture doesn’t happen by a mandate. It happens through a movement.