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How to Change People's Minds

Take a lesson (or seven) from Howard Gardner, author of Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People's Minds

Some levers will work better than others in a corporate environment. A CSO who relies strictly on his charm to "resonate" with his audience may not get very far. But the use of stories (representational redescription) can be very effective. Just be sure that the stories you communicate are inclusive rather than built around scare tactics. "Try to incorporate everyone in the same narrative and convince people that we are in this together," says Gardner. He notes that community policing is successful because people in the neighborhood see the cops trying to achieve the same goal they area safe neighborhood. Inclusiveness goes even further if you can get other people within the corporate "neighborhood" to tell some of the stories and evangelize for you. "As a CSO, I would feel better if the CIO and CEO were singing the same song as well. That way it's more of a choir, less of a solo," Gardner says.

The biggest challenge CSOs are likely to run up against is fundamentalism—not in the religious sense, but in the form of a conscious decision made by a person not to change his mind. When you encounter people whose opinions are so fixed and unwavering, Gardner advises security executives not to waste their time trying to change them. Gardner notes that he has had a long string of assistants who would leave their desk drawers open despite his frequent warnings about pocketbook safety. "Every now and then I would steal their wallets just to show them," he says, "but eventually I got too old." Plus, he says, it never worked anyway.