When Change is Hard

Miner County, South Dakota, population 2884, is located in the southeast part of the state...50 or so miles northwest of Sioux Falls. Like many communities in the Great Plains, Miner County has been devastated with a decline in farming and an exodus of young people. (For a revealing chronicle on the challenge of the Plains States, see "The Emptied Prairie" from the National Geographic.)

For Miner County, this decline all began to change a few years ago with a "stump-pulling" party...a community effort to improve a blighted small-town center. As a result of this grassroots effort, a local high school teacher assigned his students to survey the local economy. When the survey was completed, the students uncovered that, if local residents simply spent 10% more locally by shopping at the local retailers rather than driving off to the outlet malls in Sioux Falls, tax revenues would increase to $7.6 million, created funds to invest in the local economy.

With this simple target, residents were motivated to change their behavior to reach this attainable goal. The following year, tax revenues exceeded their wildest expectations...climbing to $15 million by the next year. In time, some businesses ventured into the business of repairing wind turbines — a good match for a community where people had grown up around farm equipment. Today, there’s a thriving “green tech” wind turbine repair industry in the county, and the population is growing again.

As Chip Heath points out, Miner County residents were able to create change for two reasons: 1)They came up with a clear and simple direction for the rider — do 10% more shopping locally. 2) They also motivated residents by creating a strong feeling of community, exemplified by the stump-pulling party and the student-sparked change.

These examples, and more, are explored in a fascinating new book, "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard." The authors, brothers Chip and Dan Heath are, a professor of organizational behavior in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a senior fellow at the Social Enterprise Center at Duke University, respectively.

In their research on change, the two most common quotes they heard were, "Change is hard", and "People hate change". Yet they were puzzled. Why do some huge changes, e.g. marriage or the arrival of a new child, come joyously...but trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, are met with intractable resistance?

Why Change is Hard
The answer was found in the work of psychologists who discovered that we have two separate systems in our brains, the rational and the emotional. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is impulsive and instinctual.

When the two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly. When they aren't, change doesn't happen...or, at best, happens at a glacial pace.

In their research, the Heath brothers studied people in the midst of making difficult changes...and were able to uncover similarities in the successful strategies for change. "Switch..." is their attempt to share these "success templates" with the rest of us.

by Chris Holman

Parisian Love

So, what do you do if you're a market leader like Google with a best-known product that has no real marketing problems...and you've never run a major television ad before?

You wait until Super Bowl XLIV, which turns out to be the most-watched show in U.S. History (106.5 million pairs of eyeballs) and you run an all-text spot from your online video Search Stories series called “Parisian Love”...that is markedly different from all of the other dopey ads featuring cars, beer, and scantily-clad women...that tells a love story that begins with an innocent search query all the while showcasing your technology in a way that pretty much everyone can relate to.

Oh...and you have your CEO telegraph your intentions the day before by sending a cryptic tweet . about being sure to watch the ads during the third quarter of the game, while mentioning something about hell freezing over.

Oh, oh...and you top it off by garnering beau coup plaudits from the Kellogg School's Super Bowl Advertising Review  as having the best ad of the entire Super Bowl, that also draws the most positive rating, at 98%, by Zeta Buzz, a social media mining tool that instantly taps the sentiment of millions of online blogs, message boards, and communities.

Hear that clapping sound. Don't be alarmed. That's Sergey Brin and Larry Page exchanging a very loud high-five.

All kidding aside, I loved this ad. What a beautiful, simple story...as the best ones are. Some guy decides to study abroad. Meets a French girl who think he's cute, and tries to impress her. Heads back to the States and attempts to stoke the long distance relationship thing. Still head-over-heels and seeks a full-time gig in France. Gets married in Paris. Builds a crib. Happily ever after.

As Google mercilessly pulls at our heart-strings, we see the full array of their search queries and services, e.g. Translate, Google Maps, etc., with a tag line at the end, “Search On”. What a positioning statement! A simple, powerful mantra...that says “We are all about searching for, and finding, the things that matter in life.”

Here's the wonderful thing about searching the “internets” that this ad does it's best to capture. It's not just about the search results, it's about the possibilities and promise of moving forward through life. “Search” leads to the serendipitous answers and trips down the rabbit-hole that Bing has done a masterful job in mocking. “Search On” is different. “Search On” is the results I want on what matters to me.

You know, it's almost like coaching!

There's one other thing that I found completely inspirational, and aspirational about this spot. I felt that Google was showing us how we could use their tools to accentuate whatever degree of creativity that we might have on our own. These days, the word “partnership” is overdone...but I felt that Google was demonstrating how they could partner with us to make our lives happen. In a phrase, Google makes it easy for us to be creative.

This is what makes their value proposition so terrific!

by Ray Sclafani

Creativity ='s Iceland!

There's a really fun, and creativity-inspiring, article in the most recent SMU newsletter. That's Singapore Management University, by the way. (Sorry to all of you Southern Methodist Mustangs out there!)

Fredrik Haren is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed when it comes to sowing the seeds of creativity around the world. A native of Sweden, who now lives in Singapore, Haren is a creativity expert who travels the globe speaking about creativity to hundreds of audiences in 30 different countries. Typically, he opens his presentation by asking his audiences if creativity is important to their work, and if they think they are creative persons themselves. The responses are striking:

• 98% of respondents think creativity is important to their work,
• 45% think that they are creative,
• 2% feel that their organization fosters, and rewards, creativity.

Here's another interesting nugget that Haren has gleaned from his travels. Icelanders have the highest degree of self-confidence regarding their creativity...and Asian countries have the lowest. Iceland???

Killing Creativity
Haren believes that our societal norms, expectations, and institutions are remarkably efficient at devouring all of our creative gray matter. To prove his point, he always asks his audiences to use their imagination to draw up a list of 10 "impossible" things that they wish to possess. From adult audience to adult audience, the answers are depressingly similar, e.g. "I want to fly." "I want to be invisible." etc. (With one billion+ different possible imaginative responses, adults can't even find 10 unique ideas!)

In contrast, Haren has received much different responses from preschoolers. "I want to touch love." "I want to lift a bus without breaking a finger." "I want to see with my fingers."

To Haren, this is proof positive that we are born creative, but lose our creative gumption somewhere along the way.

Where Does Creativity Start?
Says Haren, “I’ve met thousands of creative people. Some have to be with other people to brainstorm. Most prefer to be alone. I believe the way to teach creativity is to give a few examples and let each individual choose. Some people like to think big then make it realistic. Japanese like to do small improvements all the time. Indonesian innovations tend to follow how nature does things, what the Western world terms as ‘bio-mimicking’. There is no one particular technique.” So, in other words, go forth, be unconstrained, and, as they say, let the creative juices flow."

Haren also believes that creative ideas are rarely created spontaneously out of thin air. "There has never been a brand new idea or a person in history that has invented something brand new. Everything is just building on a previously existing thing,”

In fact, Haren has a formula for how ideas are created. He breaks it down to the following equation: idea = p(k+i) where p is the person, k is knowledge, and i refers to new information. “The ability to combine knowledge and information in a new way is important. Just because you have knowledge and information does not mean you are a creative person. But it is also impossible to be a creative person without knowledge and information."

Happy Birth Anniversary, Thomas Alva Edison

Speaking of creativity, Happy Birthday! to the most prolific inventor in U.S. history. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio (1847). He eventually amassed 1,093 patents, the most patents ever issued to a single person in American history. His most important inventions were the phonograph, the light bulb, and the movie camera...and General Electric, one of the largest publicly-traded companies in the world.

Thomas Edison once said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

by Chris Holman

K.I.S.S.

K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Sweetheart!

Really good article in the Boston Globe last week, "Easy = True", that discusses the concept of Cognitive Fluency, a rapidly growing field in the world of psychology.

Cognitive Fluency is an intuitively simple concept about...simplicity...that states that, we prefer things/concepts/explanations that are easy to think about as opposed things that are hard to think about it. (I will refrain from saying "Duh!")

Here's what Adam Alter, Ph.D. says though. He's a psychologist and professor of marketing at the NYU Stern school. "Every purchase you make, every interaction you have, every judgment you have...can be put along a continuum of fluent to disfluent. If you understand how fluency influences judgment, you can understand many, many different kinds of judgments better than we do at the moment.

Some examples of Cognitive Fluency:

• When presenting a person with a factual statement, manipulations that make the statement easier to mentally process (even something totally non-substantive, e.g. using a cleaner font, using a rhyme or repetition, etc.) can alter a person's judgment of the truth of the statement, along with their evaluation of the intelligence of the statement's author, and their confidence in the author's judgment and abilities,
• Shares in companies with easy-to-pronounce names significantly perform those with names that are more-difficult-to-pronounce,
• People who read about an exercise regimen in a hard-to-read font, unwittingly transfer the level of difficulty onto the topic they're reading about.

When you think about it, the rationale for Cognitive Fluency makes complete sense. It's an adaptive shortcut for our brains. It helps us allocate limited mental resources in a world where a lot of things clamor for our attention. Consequently, we must quickly figure out what is worth thinking/worrying about....and what isn't.

In the world of the financial advisor, I can think of many instances where Cognitive Fluency comes into play. A glaring example is in regard to how financial advisors ask for introductions (or referrals). We have observed that financial advisors will frame their questions asking for introductions in a manner that sounds similar to, "Who do you know...blah, blah, blah?)

Cognitive Fluency tells us that our brains prefer concepts that are easy to mentally process. The problem with the "Who do you know..." question is that it compels someone to think about EVERYONE they know, e.g. a mental list of hundreds, or thousands, of names. For many of us, when asked this sort of question...our brain simply shuts down. However, if the questioner is able to greatly simplify or limit the scope of the question, the respondent is more likely to respond in a timely fashion.

Cognitive Fluency is a crucial concept for all professionals where communication of complex subjects is an important skill...advertisers, politicians, marketers...and of course, financial advisors.

Be well.

Happy Laugh-and-Get-Rich Day!