The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an excellent model of influence in action. Their program to improve agriculture in Africa is an excellent demonstration of influence principles.

Desired Results: Their goal is to break the cycle of hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. To do this, they look broadly at systems and cycles and map the dynamics that create and perpetuate this problem.  

Focus on Agriculture: The Gates Foundation’s data reveals that the three-quarters of the world’s poorest people rely on agriculture—not manufacturing, retail, or other economic sectors. They’ve also discovered that no country has ever abolished poverty without increasing their agricultural productivity. And yet, very few resources are invested in improving agriculture. Only 4 percent of government spending in Sub-Saharan Africa supports farming, and only 4 percent of official development assistance targets farming. In fact, the fastest growing area within agricultural research is “golf grass.” That’s right, developing new varieties of grass for golf courses.

There is also a history of success. In the 1960’s and 70’s the Rockefeller Foundation launched the “Green Revolution,” a massive effort to bring improved grains, fertilizers, and pesticides to the third world. This effort saved millions of lives in Asia and Latin America, and is credited for launching much of the Asian economic miracle.

Map the Value Chain: The next step in the influence process is to map the existing system and look for crucial moments where bad outcomes can be prevented or good outcomes can be provoked. The Gates Foundation has mapped the following agricultural value chain:

1. Improving the financing available to small farmers
2. Getting high quality seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides
3. Improving farming tools and practices
4. Solving irrigation problems
5. Improving marketing and pricing practices
6. Finding ways to get crops to market

Each step in the farming process is essentially broken, but fixing any single step won’t help. The farms will only be as successful as the overall value chain permits.

Find Crucial Moments: The Gates Foundation identified several crucial breakdowns in the value chain. They’ve looked for patterns in these breakdowns, and have found them. Below are a few of the patterns the Foundation is targeting:

1. Aid programs eventually end, leaving poor farmers back where they started—or even worse off.
2. Almost all agricultural improvements and practices have targeted the wealthy.
3. Women perform 70 to 80 percent of the labor on small farms, and yet few, if any, initiatives have been designed to help them.

Identify Vital Behaviors: Next, the Gates Foundation looked at these crucial moments and identified Vital Behaviors that can make a difference.

How do you deal with the fact that all aid programs eventually end? The Gates Foundation isn’t giving away seeds or building irrigation systems; rather, they are creating an entrepreneurial infrastructure. Every step in the value chain will make somebody a good living—so that outside aid won’t be needed.

How do you create systems that target poor farmers? The data suggests poor farmers can only afford capital expenditures that will pay for themselves within a year. Bottom line: every step in the process needs to be cheap. So, the Gates Foundation is providing the initial infrastructure to change the agricultural sector from a “jewelry-store” model into a “grocery-store” model.

How do you support women? The foundation is making the financial system more user friendly to women. The Grameen Bank’s work in Bangladesh has shown that women are more likely to pay back loans. So, the Gates Foundation is including women in every part of their initiative.

Use All Six Sources of Influence: It’s tough to sort out all the sources of influence the Gates Foundation is using. However, it’s clear they are putting a lot of resources into measurement. If one of their strategies isn’t working, they will be the first to know. They are also collaborating with the Rockefeller Foundation, which knows what didn’t work in their initial Green Revolution.

I’d love to hear about your influence successes or about significant influencers you think we can all learn from. What is it they are doing that works?