Category: Excerpts

💎 On why TED talks are 18 minutes long (long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention)

It is long enough to be serious and short enough to hold people’s attention. It turns out that this length also works incredibly well online. It’s the length of a coffee break. So, you watch a great talk, and forward the link to two or three people. It can go viral, very easily. The 18-minute length also works much like the way Twitter forces people to be disciplined in what they write. By forcing speakers who are used to going on for 45 minutes to bring it down to 18, you get them to really thing about what they want to say. What is the key point they want to communicate? It has a clarifying effect. It brings discipline.

Excerpt from: TED Talks: The official TED guide to public speaking by Chris Anderson

💎 On the power of aligning incentives (jumping out of a plane)

Here’s another example: in World War 2, US paratroopers had a problem with the fact that, allegedly, one in twenty chutes failed in some way. The soliton was to require the packers and inspectors to regularly jump out of airplanes using parachutes chosen at random from the store. The quality of packing then rose to 100 per cent and stayed there. “The packers are all jumpers,” explained on NCO to Stars and Stripes magazine: ” We try to have each man jump once a month. That’s a pretty food way to keep them honest on the tables.”

Excerpt from: One Step Ahead: Notes from the Problem Solving Unit

💎 On the Power of Diversity to Solve Problems

What is more, the effect was large: groups that has to accommodate an outsider were substantially more likely to reach the correct conclusion — they did so 75 per cent of the time, versus 54 per cent for a homogeneous group and 44 per cent for an individual.

Excerpt from: Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World by Tim Harford

💎 On the power of brevity (Hemingway 6 word novel)

No one knows wether the story’s true, but it is a good one anyway. Ernest Hemingway was sitting having a drink with some writer friends at Luchow’s restaurant in New York. They were taking about this and that, and eventually moved on to what the ideal length of a good novel might be. Hemingway claimed that he could write a novel in six words: the others each bet ten dollars that he couldn’t. Whereupon Hemingway wrote: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” on a napkin. Six words, behind which lies a tragedy. Those who don’t gulp when they read this must have hearts of stone.

Excerpt from: The Communication Book: 44 Ideas for Better Conversations Every Day: 50 Ideas for Better Conversation Every Day by Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler

💎 On breaking sales records using the anchoring bias (selling Girl Scout cookies)

Years ago, when The Tonight Show rules late-night TV and when the all the guests weren’t celebrities promoting their latest book, movie, or TV show, host Johnny Carson interviewed the Girl Scout who sold the most cookies that year. This young lady, Markita Andrews, set a cookie sales record that was never broken. What was her technique? In addition to hard work, she used a framing strategy to make her customers view the purchase as a trivial expense.

Markita’s strategy was simple When she knocked on a door, she would firs ask for a $30,000 donation to the Girl Scouts. Naturally, she had no takers on that request. But then she’d ask if they would at least buy a box of Girl Scout cookies. and just about everyone would.

Excerpt from: Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing by Roger Dooley

💎 On why we often continue with failing projects for far too long (sunk costs)

“To withdraw now is to accept a sure loss,” he writes about digging oneself deeper into a political hole, “and that option is deeply unattractive.” When you combine this with the force of commitment, “the option of hanging on will therefore be relatively attractive, even if the chances of success are small and the cost of delaying failure is high.”

Excerpt from: Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behaviour by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman

💎 On how labour leads to love (baking cakes)

When instant cake mixes were introduced in the 1950s as part of a broader trend to simplify the life of the American housewife by minimising manual labour, housewives were initially resistant. The mixes made cooking too easy, making their labour and skill seem undervalued.

Learning this, Betty Crocker, one of the leading manufacturers of mixes, changed their recipe to require adding an egg. This simple change caused sales to skyrocket. Infusing the task with labour appeared to be a crucial ingredient in the product’s success.

When people create products with their own labour, their effort increases their perception of the end product’s valuation. And while some labour is enjoyable and allows for product customisation—both of which might increase valuation—research suggests that labour alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking and value associated with the results.

Excerpt from: Product Gems 2: 109 Science Experiments That Demonstrate How to Build Products People Love by David Greenwood

💎 On the power of uncertainty to increase savings participation (Premium Bonds)

More than 22 million UK citizens, about one-third of the population, have invested over £68 billion in premium bonds despite the interest rate they offer is well below that offered by other savings products. The reality is, unless you win one of the very large prizes, you will be worse off holding premium bonds than investing elsewhere.

So why are they so popular? It’s down to uncertainty. Uncertainty creates more positive, exciting experiences. We get excited by the unknown. Uncertainty increases one’s investment of effort, time, and money in pursuing rewards—even when the outcome is likely to be worse than more certain alternatives.

Excerpt from: Product Gems 2: 109 Science Experiments That Demonstrate How to Build Products People Love by David Greenwood

💎 On the power of doing good to boost sales (organic cotton and Patagonia)

In the mid-1990s, there was a shortage of organic cotton—cotton that Patagonia relied on to make its products. While other companies might source non-organic alternatives in the interim, Chouinard’s’ response was “if we have to be in business using an evil product like traditionally grown cotton, we don’t deserve to be in business”.

The big ‘a-ha’ for Chouinard was that you could do something good for the environment that was also good for your business. Patagonia became California’s first B Corporation in January 2012. At the time, the company was turning over $600m in annual revenues and employed around 2000 people.

Patagonia continues to donate 10% of its profits to small-scale environmental campaigns where $10,000-$15,000 can make a real difference. Their Worn Wear initiative encourages the repair, recycling and resale of garments. The company once took a full-page advert in the New York Times with the tagline: “don’t buy this jacket, unless you really need it”.

Excerpt from: Product Gems 1: 101 Science Experiments That Demonstrate How to Build Products People Love by David Greenwood

💎 On creativity being about connecting things (as noted by Steve Jobs)

“Creativity is just connecting things,” Jobs told Wired Magazine. “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had a synthesise new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people… Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and the end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.”

Excerpt from: Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries by Peter Sims

💎 On obsessing over easily quantified data often having damaging results (the invention of the Tesco “Free From” range)

The obsession with easily quantified date crowds out the need for discretion and judgement.

Two examples illustrate the resulting issues. First is the experience of Terry Leahy who, when he was head of marketing at Tesco, analysed the performance of their gluten-free products. The sales data hinted it was an under-performing section – those that bought gluten-free goods only spent a few pounds on these items each shopping trip. A naive interpretation suggested de-listing them to free up valuable shelf space.

However, sceptical of the number, Leahy interviewed gluten-free shoppers and discovered that their choice of supermarket was determined by the availability of those products. They didn’t want to make multiple shopping trips, so the visited whoever had the specialist goods. After all, every shop had milk and eggs but only sone stocked gluten-free goods. Leahy used this insight to launch Tesco’s hugely successful “Free From” range long before the competition.

Excerpt from: The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy by Richard Shotton

💎 On the power of asking a question rather than just stating a fact (during political campaigns)

If unemployment and inflation are up and confidence in the future is down, telling voters that life has gotten worse, while clearly factual, is less effective than asking voters “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Ronald Reagan asked Jimmy Carter and the tens of millions of debate listeners this devastating political question in their only face-to-face campaign encounter in 1980. No litany of economic data or political accusation could carry the power of a simple rhetorical question that for most Americans has an equally simple answer. “Are you better off” framed not just the debate, held only five days before the election, but the entire campaign, and it propelled Reagan from a dead even to ta nine-point victory over the incumbent Carter.

Excerpt from: Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz

💎 On the danger of falling for the idea of brand love (it’s not because of some strong emotional bond)

“Most of a brand’s customers think and care little about the brand, but the brand manager should care about these people because they represent most of the brand’s sales.” Professor Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow (Oxford University Press).

Even this customers who repeatedly buy from your brand most likely do so out of simple habit and the product delivering on their needs. Contrary to the moonshine widely peddled by many branding and advertising “experts”, it’s not because of some strong emotional bond.

When we exaggerated the role that the brand plays in people’s lives, it leads to self-important and phoney advertising. People are smart enough to realise this and know when they’re being patronised.

Excerpt from: How To Make Better Advertising And Advertising Better by Vic Polinghorne and Andy Palmer

💎 On the power of reframing to define the debate (encouraging support for new policies)

In effect, positioning an idea doesn’t merely “frame” it so that it carries a certain meaning; it actually defines the terms of the debate itself.

For example, by almost two-to-one, Americans say we are spending too much on “welfare” (42 percent) rather than too little (23 percent). Yet an overwhelming 68 percent of American think we are spending too little on “assistance to the poor,” versus a mere 8 percent who think we’re spending too much. Think about it: What is assistance to the poor? Welfare! So while the underlying policy in question may be the same, the definition — welfare versus assistance to the poor — and positioning make all the difference in public reaction. If the context is a government program itself, the process and the public hostility is significant. But if the context is the result of that government program, the support is significant.

Excerpt from: Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz

💎 On investing in companies that have flaws (often the big winners)

… the venture capital business is 100 percent a game of outliers, it is extreme outliers… We have this concept, invest in strength versus lack of weakness. And at first that is obvious, but it’s actually fairly subtle. Which is sort of the default way to do venture capital, is to check boxes. So “really good founder, really good idea, really good products, really good initial customers. Check, check, check. Okay this is reasonable, I’ll put money in it.” What you find with those sort of checkbox deals, and they get done all the time, but what you find is that they often don’t have something that really makes them really remarkable and special. They don’t have an extreme strength that makes them an outlier. On the other side of that, the companies that have the really extreme strengths often have serious flaws. So one of the cautionary lessons of venture capital is, if you don’t invest on the basis of serious flaws, you don’t invest in most of the big winners.

Excerpt from: Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker

💎 On the danger of forgetting who the end user is (journalists write for other journalists)

There’s another risk factor among the outlets that consider themselves to be “quality” journalism – that writers become more concerned with the opinion of other journalists than with the audience. This is a concern that dates back at least to the 1970s. “Journalists write for other journalists, the people they have lunch with rather than the reader,” an unnamed journalist said at the time, leading one academic to conclude: “Their image of the audience is hazy and unimportant… they care primarily about the reaction of the editor and their fellow-reporters.”

This tendency is exacerbated in US award culture, where the most prestigious prizes favour journalism written in great length – often 10,000 words or more and presented in a dense, discursive fashion. These pieces are often, for a journalist like me, a joy to read and are often produced over the course of months. They are often the very best articles their outlets produce – but it’s not hard to argue that they’re not as accessible or impactful as they could be.

Excerpt from: Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World by James Ball

💎 On the power of getting a commitment (watch my things)

Take, as proof, what happened when psychologist Thomas Moriarty staged thefts on a New York City beach to see if onlookers would risk personal harm to halt the crime. In the study, a research accomplice would put a beach blanket down five feet from the blanket of a randomly chosen individual – the experimental subject. After a couple of minutes on the blanked spent relaxing and listening to music from a portable radio, the accomplice would stand up and leave the blanket to stroll down the beach, A few minutes later, a second researcher, pretending to be a thief, would approach, grab the radio, and try to hurry away with it. As you might guess, under normal conditions, subjects were very reluctant to put themselves in harms way by challenging the thief – only four people did so in the twenty times that the theft was staged. But when the same procedure was tried another twenty times, with a slight twist, the results were drastically different. In these incidents before taking his stroll, the accomplice would simple ask the subject to please “watch my things,” which each of them agreed to do. Now, propelled by the rule for consistency, nineteen of the twenty subjects became virtual vigilantes, running after and stopping the thief.

Excerpt from: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

💎 On the downside of spreadsheets and the illusions they create (intangible factors aren’t so easily quantified)

The spreadsheet is a tool, but it is also a worldview — reality by the numbers… Because spreadsheets can do so many important things, those who use them tend to lose sight of the crucial fact that the imaginary businesses that they can create on their computers are just that — imaginary. You can’t really duplicate a business inside a computer, just aspects of a business. And since numbers are the strength of spreadsheets, the aspects that get emphasised are the one easily embodied in numbers. Intangible factors aren’t so easily quantified.

Excerpt from: The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Muller

💎 On why clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first (the contrast principle)

Those who employ it can cash in on its influence without any appearance of having structured the situation in their favor. Retail clothiers are a good example. Suppose a man enters a fashionable men’s store and says that he wants to buy a three-piece suit and a sweater. If you were the salesperson, which would you show him first to make him likely to spend the most money?

Clothing stores instruct their sales personnel to sell the costly item first. Common sense might suggest the reverse: If a man has just spent a lot of money to purchase a suit, he may be reluctant to spend very much more on the purchase of a sweater. But clothiers know better. They behave in accordance with what the contrast principle would suggest: Sell the suit first, because when it comes time to look at sweaters, even expensive ones, their prices will not seem as high in comparison. A man might bulk at the idea of spending $95 for a sweater, but if he has just bought a $495 suit, a $95 sweater does not seem excessive. The same principle applies to a man who wishes to buy the accessories (shirts, shoes, belt) to go along with his new suit.

Contrary to the commonsense view, the evidence supports the contrast-principle prediction. As sales motivation analysts Whitney, Hubin, and Murphy state, “The interesting thing is that even when a man enters a clothing stores with the express purpose of purchasing a suit, he will almost always pay more for whatever accessories he buys if he buys them after the suit purchase than before.”

Excerpt from: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

💎 On the mismatch between employers and employees (leaders need to drastically over-communicate priorities)

A while back Inc. magazine asked executives at six hundred companies to estimate the percentage of their workforce who could name the company’s top priorities. The executives predicted that 64 percent would be able to name them. When Inc. then asked employees to name the priorities, only 2 percent could do so. This is not the exception but the rule. Leaders are inherently biased to presume that everyone in the group sees things as they do, when in fact they don’t. This is why it’s necessary to drastically over-communicate priorities. The leaders I visited with were not shy about this.

Excerpt from: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

💎 On the importance of judging a presentation by its effect (not its technical excellence)

In here delightful book, On Speaking Well, Peggy Noonan (who wrote speeches for former Presidents Bush and Reagan) tells a story about Coco Chanel that illustrates this important distinction. Chanel believed that the hallmark of a great dress was that it didn’t call too much attention to itself. Thus if a woman walked into a room wearing one of her dresses and everyone said, “What a fabulous dress!” she had failed. Success came when the woman walked into the room and people said, “You look fabulous!”

In the same way, a presenter fails if people say “What a great presentation!”.

Excerpt from: Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business by Jon Steel

💎 On our tendency to underestimate how much social proof affects our behaviour (increasing busking donations)

At a busy New York City subway station we hired researchers to count the number of commuters who donated to a street musician as they walked past.

After a short time a small change was made to the situation that had an immediate and impressive impact. Just before an approaching (and unsuspecting) commuter reached the musician, another person (who was in on the act) would drip a few coins into the musician’s hat in view of the approaching commuter. The result? An eight-fold increase in the number of commuters who chose to make a donations.

In a series of post-study interviews with commuters who did donate, every one of them failed to attribute their action to the fact that they had just seen someone else give money first. Instead they provided alliterative justifications: “I liked the song he was playing”; “I’m a generous person”; and “I felt sorry for the guy.”

Excerpt from: The Small BIG: Small Changes that Spark Big Influence by Robert Cialdini, Noah Goldstein, and Steve Martin

 

💎 On the power of asking obvious questions (it’s never foolish)

The barrier created by thinking “I may make a fool of myself if I ask this” can mean that starting points and new directions for thinking remain undiscovered. Always ask the questions that seem too obvious, or those you think you’re supposed to know the answers to. When industrial designer Kenneth Grange was briefed to develop new express trains for British Rail in the 1970s, a seeming naive question popped into his head; “What exactly are the buffers on the locomotive for?” Expecting to be told “They’re to stop the trains crashing into stations, stupid!”, instead he learnt that they were for shunting carriages  — a redundant activity from a bygone era.

Excerpt from: The A-Z of Visual Ideas: How to Solve any Creative Brief by John Ingledew

💎 On overconfidence being a bigger problem than incompetence (usually mistake of experts who have power and authority)

We all spend a lot of time complaining about incompetence, but as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in a talk he gave at High Point University, overconfidence is the far bigger problem. Why? Incompetence is a problem that inexperienced people have, and all things being equal, we don’t entrust inexperienced people with all that much power or authority. Overconfidence is usually the mistake of experts, and we do give them a lot of power and authority. Plain and simple, incompetence is frustrating, but the people guilty of it usually can’t screw things up that bad. The people guilty of overconfidence can do more damage.

Excerpt from: Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

💎 The power of making it personal (think about how someone else might feel)

Emotions get people to change their behavior. In his show Crowd Control, Dan Pink tried to get people to stop illegally using handicapped parking spots. When Dan’s team changed the handicapped signs so they has a picture of a person in a wheelchair on them, illegal parking in the spots didn’t go down — it topped altogether. Seeing a person’s face, thinking about how someone else might feel, made all the difference.

Excerpt from: Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker

💎 On the unintended consequence of banning things making them more desirable (changing our perception of them)

The second reaction to the the law was more subtle and more general than the deliberate defiance of the smugglers and hoarders. Spurred by the tendency to want what they could no longer have, the majority of Miami consumers came to see phosphate cleaners as better products than before. Compared to Tampa residents, who were not affected by the Dade County ordinance, the citizens of Miami rated phosphates detergents as gentler, more effective in cold water, better whiteners and fresheners, more powerful on stains. Affect passage of the law, they had even come to believe that phosphate detergents poured more easily than did the Tampa consumers.

Excerpt from: Consumer Reaction to Restriction of Choice Alternatives by Michael Mazis and Robert Settle

💎 On why we should seek out disconfirming evidence when formulating a theory (confirmation bias)

No professionals suffer more from the confirmation bias than business journalists. Often, they formulate an easy theory, pad it out with two or three pieces of ‘evidence’ and call it a day. For example: “Google is so successful because the company nurtures a culture of creativity.” Once the idea is on paper, the journalist corroborates it by mentioning a few other prosperous companies that foster ingenuity. Rarely does the writer seek out disconfirming evidence, which in this instance would be struggling businesses that live and breathe creativity or, conversely, flourishing firms that are utterly uncreative. Both groups have plenty of members, but the journalist simply ignores them. If he or she were to mention just one, the storyline would be ruined.

Excerpt from: The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli

💎 On how little shoppers notice when in store (sleep shopping)

One successful example was Sainsbury’s in 2004 who realised much supermarket shopping was done in a daze. “Sleep shopping” as they termed it. Shoppers were buying the same items week in, week out — restricting themselves to the same 150 items despite there being 30,000 on offer.

AMV BBDO, Sainsbury’s creative agency, went to great lengths to dramatise the extent of sleep shopping. They hired a man dressed in a gorilla suit and sent him to a Sainsbury’s to do his week’s shopping. They questioned shoppes as they were leaving the store and a surprisingly low percentage had noticed him. When shoppers are on autopilot it’s hard to grab their attention.

Excerpt from: The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton

💎 On second-order social intelligence (and the dangers of discounting)

The following is a perfect illustration of the tendency of modern business to pretend that economics is true, even when it isn’t. London’s West End theatres often send out emails to people who have attended their productions in the past, to encourage them to book tickets, and it was the job of an acquaintance of mine who worked as a marketing executive for a theatre company to send out these emails. Over time, she learned something that defied conventional economic rules; it seemed that if you send out an email promoting a play or musical, you sold fewer tickets with the email. Conversely, offering tickets at full price seemed to increase demand.

According to economic theory, this makes no sense at all, but in the real world it is perfectly plausible. After all, any theatre selling tickets t a discount clearly has plenty to spare, and from this it might be reasonable to infer that the entertainment on offer isn’t all that good. No one wants to spend £100-£200 on tickets, a mean, car-parking and babysitting, only to find that you would have had more fun watching television at home; in avoiding discounted theatre tickets, people are not being silly – they are showing a high degree of second-order social intelligence.

Excerpt from: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense by Rory Sutherland