By Steve Martin, CMCT

Today’s increasingly complex business world can serve up some pretty challenging situations that even the most seasoned of us will find difficult to navigate through. Thankfully though, there’s often a colleague, co-worker or friend who will be happy to pass on the benefit of their wisdom to help you deal with that difficult decision or knotty issue.

And while advice like “Why not sleep on it?” or “You should take a step back and view the issue from afar” certainly won’t be lacking in good intentions, it might sometimes be lacking a deeper understanding given that their appreciation of your situation will often be informed by nothing more than a quick and detached glance. But before completely dismissing their counsel it might be worth considering some new evidence supporting the benefits of consciously creating some physical distance from a problem at hand.

Perhaps even more interestingly, the insights from these studies are not only instructive when it comes to helping you to solve problems or make decisions. Especially during the early stages of making a business proposal or a sales presentation, asking potential customers and clients to take a step back before they consider your products and services could actually make it easier for them to do business with you.    

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By Steve Martin, CMCT

You do your best to recycle whenever you can, right? Maybe the company you work for has a pro-environmental policy that encourages staff to use less paper and to recycle as much as possible of that which is used. It certainly wouldn’t be alone. Increasing numbers of organizations, communities too, are recognizing the benefits of recycling as a way to conserve energy and natural resources and many will have policies and strategies in place to encourage it. 

But could certain strategies designed to persuade people to recycle actually be counterproductive leading to an increase rather than a decrease in the use of resources? A new study suggests that, at least in certain conditions, they could. It turns out that the insights gleaned from this study don’t just have implications for your office environmental policy.

They may also have implications for your wider change initiatives too. 

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 By Steve Martin, CMCT

 In late October 2012 Hurricane Sandy bulldozed its way through the Caribbean and across the Mid-Atlantic before hitting land again in the North-Eastern United States causing a trail of destruction and devastation in its wake. Violent gusts nearing 100 mph accompanied by lashing rains left widespread damage estimated at over $75 billion. In the aftermath many thousands of individuals as well as organizations such as the American Red Cross and the United Nations marshaled resources towards clean-up and relief operations. Corporations and businesses helped too. A number of network news channels held telethons and appeals that generated millions of dollars in donations.

The role played by the news networks wasn’t just limited to encouraging contributions towards relief efforts. They were also responsible for generating a series of unofficial names for the hurricane. Snowicane was one such example that served to highlight the projected snow fall that would accompany hurricane Sandy. Frankenstorm was another – a reference to the storm’s close proximity to Halloween.

While I am not aware of any evidence that assigning an unofficial name to a hurricane would have any influence on an individual’s likelihood to support relief efforts, there is evidence of a connection between a hurricane’s official name and some individual’s likelihood to donate.

Not only is this connection surprising, it could offer some important insights into how you persuade others in the future.  

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By: Steve Martin

As any good economist will tell you, people respond to incentives. But as a behavioral psychologist will also point out, peoples’ responses to incentives will be influenced as much by the context in which an incentive is presented, as what’s actually on offer. For example, people are generally more persuaded by the thought of avoiding a loss of something than gaining the exact same thing. In the arena of loss versus gain, what is the same economically becomes very different psychologically.

Timing can provide an important context too. Studies have shown our tendency to live for today at the expense of tomorrow. Offered a choice between $20 today or $22 tomorrow, most will take the money now. Change the context though – $20 in a week’s time or $22 in eight days – and more people will wait the extra day for the bigger reward and, in doing so, demonstrate how frustratingly inconsistent human decisions and behavior can sometimes be.

So when it comes to using incentives to influence behaviors, context (such as a loss versus gain frame or timing of the reward) matter. A lot! And according to new research, so does how you categorize incentives. It seems that separating incentives into different categories can motivate more people to acquire them – even if those categories are meaningless!

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Steve Martin, CMCT

Social Proof, at some point most of us will have succumbed to its powerful draw. Perhaps we’ve chosen the busy restaurant over the quieter one, been carried along by the momentum of the Mexican wave at a sports stadium or simply joined the burgeoning line at the airport without really knowing for sure if we are in the right line. 

Regardless of ‘the what’ and ‘the where’ there is a universal truth at play. Witnessing others behaving in a particular way will often lead to us following, in a largely automatic and unthinking fashion.

That a context of consensus will frequently trump cognition is both worrisome and comforting. We worry about being seen as lemming-like, of submitting control of our decisions to the crowd, even if doing so allows us to gain command of some of the more important decisions that we need to make in our daily lives. And yet we can take comfort because such submissions mostly lead us to the right decisions regardless of their magnitude. If my work colleagues are all talking about how they enjoyed that latest movie then I will likely enjoy it too. And if hundreds of them rush from the office building shouting ‘FIRE’, it probably makes sense to follow them.   

Of course not everyone follows the crowd in every context. In some instances some people will purposely not follow the crowd because they want to be different. And some new research is shedding light on when people are most likely to diverge from the social proof of a situation. Understanding these insights could be very useful for anyone looking to ethically and effectively influence others.

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