Working with People

Social entrepreneurs and innovators are people who are passionate about social change. As Ashoka defines it:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change. Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.

In other words, the art of influence and persuasion comes into very good use for the aspiring social entrepreneur or innovator, as working with people to change thinking and actions is one way of creating change within the system. A great reference that I have come across is the website, ChangingMinds.org, and as Guy Kawasaki put its, ChangingMinds.org is like Robert Cialdini... on steroids.

And for those of you who are unfamiliar with Cialdini, I would highly recommend Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (probably his most famous book), as well as his latest book, Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, of which he is a co-author. Guy Kawasaki also does a fantastic job of reviewing the latter here.

Posted via web from Renjie Butalid