Trust the Elephant

Last night I tossed and turned for a couple of hours, thinking about the big conference call that would be coming at 11 am.  During this conference call, I was going to encourage that we reapply the methods of a factory that, in one aspect of the business, was greatly outperforming all the rest.  Seems logical, but, unfortunately, the other plants naturally conclude that I'm perceiving them as as second best or worse.  At 3am, 4am, and again at 5am, I wondered whether the big conference call was going to be filled with arguments and defensiveness.

But I started to tell myself to "trust the elephant".  Trust the model that I had been reading about in the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan and Chip Heath.  Trust that I can persuade people to change if I direct the rider of the elephant (in simple terms, what do I propose we do?), motivate the elephant (connect to emotions by painting a picture of how this can make their lives better), and clear the path (help make the change as easy as possible).  I decided to let this model guide everything I said during the phone call.  I fell asleep after I decided to "trust the elephant".  Later, when I had the phone call, the plan worked.  No insurmountable arguments, everyone aligned to the next steps, and we got through a one hour call with 10 minutes to spare.