Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Sunday Shorts – 2
We weren’t predicting the end of the world. Just the fiscal cliff.
Unless I’m dreaming, the world didn’t end … so we still have to deal with reality. As we wrap up the year, I’ve spotted a number of summary articles around the themes of communication, persuasion, innovation, strategy, and brand. I’ve also included a Top Ten list that will teach you a lot about how to communicate effectively … and how not to. It’s interesting to see that people in the public eye are still making basic mistakes that the Greeks warned us about 2,000 years ago. Perhaps we should listen to the Greeks more than the Mayans. Enjoy your Sunday reading.
- What were the best ads of the year? Here’s Nielsen’s summary of TV commercials in the United States. (Click here). It’s interesting that there is very little overlap between the best liked ads and the most memorable ads. That begs the question, what makes an ad memorable, if it’s not just likability? Click here for Nielsen’s advice on creating affective ads that marry message with impact.
- Who delivered the biggest Tweet of the year? That is, the single tweet that was re-tweeted more than any other. Was it Justin Bieber or Barack Obama? Click here to find out.
- Who were the best communicators of the year? Who were the worst? Here’s the 17th annual Top Ten List of the best and worst communicators. According to the list makers, the best communicator was a woman; the worst was a man. (Click here).
- What are the most valuable brands in the world? Here is Interbrand’s summary of the world’s top 100 brands, by value. (Click here). Here’s what Eurobrands has to say. (Click here). Apparently my company, Travis White Communications, barely missed the list.
- Naming rights can be an important part of your marketing/branding mix. You can name stadiums or schools or buildings. But a cancer drug? In Sweden, now you can even do that. Researchers at Uppsala Univeristy will allow you to name a new drug for a modest fee of $1.6 million. (Click here).
- What’s going to happen in the economy next year? The broadest perspective I’ve seen comes from McKinsey’s annual global survey. (Click here). Hint: they’re moderately optimistic.
- Should you invest in stocks or bonds or fine wines in the new year? This article (click here) suggests that fine wines not only taste better than stocks and bonds, they also deliver better returns.
Are You More Creative When You’re Sleepy?
Gosh, I’m feeling so creative.
I’m a morning person. I wake up every day full of plans and optimism. I just know I can solve the problems of the world today. (Yes, I’m a bit obnoxious). In the evening, on the other hand, I run out of gas. I like to do a little light reading and go to bed early. A psychologist would say that the morning is my “optimal” time while the evening is my “non-optimal” time.
It seems logical that I would be more creative during my optimal time, no? Well, … maybe not. According to two psychology professors, Mareike B. Wieth and Rose T. Zacks, your non-optimal times may be your better times for creativity.
In a research paper published in 2011 (click here or see full citation below), Wieth and Zacks determined the optimal times — morning or evening — of 428 randomly selected students and then asked them to complete, three “analytic” problems and three “insight” problems. Analytic problems “…require the solver to ‘grind out the solution’ by searching through and narrowing the problem space.” In other words, you start on a path and stay on that path until you find the solution.
Insight problems, on the other hand, “are often solved suddenly with a ‘flash of illuminance’ … or what has also been called an ‘‘Aha’’ experience where the solution seems to just pop into mind.” The process of solving an insight problem is also different. People typically start on a given path, hit a wall, and then jump to a different path. As the authors phrase it, “…to move past the impasse, the solver must break away from his or her focus on the current representation of the problem and find an alternative way of structuring the problem space.”
Students completed their six problems at randomly assigned times. Some completed the problems during their optimal times, others during their non-optimal times. The results varied by problem type. Students solved analytical problems better when they worked during their optimal time. For insight problems, however, students were more successful when they worked during their non-optimal times.
Why would that be? Wieth and Zacks hypothesize that it has to with “…inhibitory processes [that] control the flow of information from thought and perception.” Simply put, we can focus better during our optimal times because our inhibitory processes block out distracting information. That’s good for grind-it-out problems — our inhibitory processes help us focus on the solution path. With insight problems, on the other hand, distracting information can actually help us jump to the right path. During our non-optimal times, our inhibitory processes are less effective. We’re less focused and our mind wanders more. More “distracting” information enters our thoughts. All of that helps us discern other paths that can lead to an Aha experience.
So, do you want to be more creative? Just stay up late and let your mind wander. That’s not so hard.
Mareike B. Wieth & Rose T. Zacks (2011): Time of day effects on problem solving: When the non-optimal is optimal, Thinking & Reasoning, 17:4, 387-401. This work was supported by National Institute on Aging Grant R37 AG04306.
Does Smoking Cause Cancer in Humans?
You can’t prove nothing.
Let’s do an experiment. We’ll randomly select 50,000 people from around the United States. Then we’ll assign them — also randomly — to two groups of 25,000 each. Let’s call them Groups X and Y. We’ll require that every member of Group X must smoke at least three packs of cigarettes per day. Members of Group Y, on the other hand, must never smoke or even be exposed to second hand smoke. We’ll follow the two groups for 25 years and monitor their health. We’ll then announce the results and advise people on the health implications of smoking.
I’ve just described a pretty good experiment. We manipulate the independent variable — in this case, smoking — to identify how it affects the dependent variable — in this case, personal health. We randomize the two groups so we’re sure that there’s no hidden variable. If we find that X influences Y, we can be sure that it’s cause and effect. It can’t be that Y causes X. Nor can it be that Z causes both X and Y. It has to be that X causes Y. There’s no other explanation.
The experimental method is the gold standard of causation. It’s the only way to prove cause and effect beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet, it’s also a very difficult standard to implement. Especially in cases involving humans, the ethical questions often prevent a true experimental method. Could we really do the experiment I described above? Would you be willing to be assigned to Group X?
The absence of good experiments can confuse our public policy. For many years, the tobacco industry claimed that no one had ever conclusively proven that smoking caused cancer in humans. That’s because we couldn’t ethically run experiments on humans. We could show a correlation between smoking and cancer. But the tobacco industry claimed that correlation is not causation. There could be some hidden variable, Z, that caused people to take up smoking and also caused cancer. Smoking is voluntary; it’s a self-selected group. It could be — the industry argued — that whatever caused you to choose to smoke also caused your cancer.
While we couldn’t run experiments on humans, we did run experiments on animals. We did essentially what I described above but substituted animals for humans. We proved — beyond a shadow of a doubt — that smoking caused cancer in animals. The tobacco industry replied that animals are different from humans and, therefore, we had proven nothing about human health.
Technically, the tobacco industry was right. Correlation doesn’t prove causation. Animal studies don’t prove that the same effects will occur in humans. For years, the tobacco industry gave smokers an excuse: nobody has ever proven that smoking causes cancer.
Yet, in my humble opinion, the evidence is overwhelming that smoking causes cancer in humans. Given the massive settlements of the past 20 years, apparently the courts agree with me. That raises an intriguing question: what are the rules of evidence when we can’t run an experiment? When we can’t run an experiment to show that X causes Y, how do we gather data — and how much data do we need to gather — to decide policy and business issues? We may not be able to prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt, but are there common sense rules that allow us to make common sense decisions? I can’t answer all these questions today but, for me, these questions are the essence of critical thinking. I’ll be writing about them a lot in the coming months.
Ice Cream and Muggings
Feel like mugging someone?
Did you know that the sale of ice cream is strongly correlated to the number of muggings in a given locale? Could it be that consuming ice cream leads us to attack our fellow citizens? Or perhaps miscreants in our midst mug strangers to get the money to buy ice cream? We have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? In this case, there’s a third variable, Z, that causes both X and Y. It’s the temperature. As the temperature rises, we buy more ice cream. At the same time, more people are wandering about out of doors, even after dark, making them convenient targets for muggers.
What causes what? It’s the most basic question in science. It’s also an important question for business planning. Lowering our prices will cause sales to rise, right? Maybe. Similarly, government policies are typically based on notions of cause and effect. Lowering taxes will cause the economy to boom, right? Well… it’s complicated. Let’s look at some examples where cause and effect are murky at best.
Home owners commit far fewer crimes proportionally than people who don’t own homes. Apparently, owning a home makes you a better citizen. Doesn’t it follow that the government should promote home ownership? Doing so should result in a safer, saner society, no? Well… maybe not. Again, we have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? Could it be that people who don’t commit crimes are in a better position to buy homes? That not committing crimes is the cause and home ownership is the result? The data are completely tangled up so it’s hard to prove conclusively one way or the other. But it seems at least possible that good citizenship leads to home ownership rather than vice versa. Or maybe, like ice cream and muggings, there’s a hidden variable, Z, that causes both.
The crime rate in the United States began to fall dramatically in the early 1990s. I’ve heard four different reasons for this. Which one do you think is the real cause?
- Legalized abortion — in 1973, the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion in the United States. Eighteen years later, the crime rate began to fall precipitously. Coincidence?
- The “broken windows” theory of policing — police traditionally focused on serious crime while ignoring petty crimes. In the 1980s, sociologists began to argue that ignoring petty crime sent a signal to would-be criminals that citizens will tolerate crime in a given area. Even minor crimes like broken windows could send the wrong message. Police adopted the idea and started cracking down on petty crimes. The message? If minor crimes are not tolerated, just think what they’ll do for bigger crimes!
- The aging population — we’re getting older. Young people commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes. As our nation ages, we become more sedate.
- The “get tough” sentencing movement — politicians in the 1980s began to sponsor legislation to “get tough” on crime by imposing longer, mandatory sentences. One result has been a dramatic rise in our prison population. (In fact, I read recently that the U.S. has 700 people incarcerated for every 100,000 citizens. In Sweden, the equivalent rate is 70 prisoners. Could it be that we’re ten times more criminal than Swedes? Swedes are blonde and they don’t commit crimes. Cause and effect, right? Perhaps we should all dye our hair blonde.)
Which of the four variables actually caused the declining crime rate in America? A lot is riding on the answer. Unfortunately, the data are so tangled up that it’s difficult to tell what causes what. But here are some rules for thinking about correlation and causation:
- If you think X cause Y, always ask the reverse question. Is it possible that Y caused X?
- Always look for a hidden variable, Z, that could cause both X and Y.
Actually, the only way to prove cause and effect beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the experimental method. Which leads us to our question for tomorrow: does smoking cause cancer in humans?
More Creative Creativity
I’m a traditionalist. And an iconoclast.
In his classic research on creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote that creative personalities often display ten contrasting characteristics. In previous articles, we’ve looked at the first six. (Click here and here). Today let’s look at the final four.
In all cultures, men are brought up to be “masculine” and to disregard and repress those aspects of their temperament that the culture regards as “feminine,” whereas women are expected to do the opposite. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape this rigid gender role stereotyping. Csikszentmihalyi refers to this as androgyny — not just in the sexual sense but in the broader, cultural sense: “a person’s ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive…” In his sample of creative personalities, Csikszentmihalyi found that the men were more sensitive and the women more assertive than their cultural norms would suggest.
Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. Yet it is impossible to be creative without having first internalized a domain of culture. To master the vast knowledge of a given discipline, novices need to work very hard. They wouldn’t work so hard unless they believed deep knowledge of the field were important. Thus, in some senses, they are traditionalists as much as they are iconoclasts.
Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. To perform difficult tasks that might take years to complete, one needs to be passionate. Yet to place one’s work against an existing domain’s framework — and to make it credible — one needs to be clear-eyed and objective.
Finally, the openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment. Leading a discipline into a new way of thinking is a lonely job. Being sensitive (as noted above) only complicates the issue. Csikszentmihalyi asks an important question: does suffering lead to creativity or does creativity lead to suffering? Normal people may see divergent thinking and obsessive interest in obscure topics as weird or even deviant. As a result, “the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood …. Yet when the person is working in the area of his or her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.”
So we have ten different contrasting personality types that commonly occur in creative people. In each case, the creative personality appears at two different points on the spectrum. They are both traditionalists and iconoclasts. Smart and naive. Energetic and quiet. Introverts and extroverts. Imaginative and realists. As Csikszentmihalyi points out, “…without the second pole, new ideas will not be recognized. And without the first, they will not be developed to the point of acceptance.”
Click here for Csikszentmihalyi’s book. By the way, his surname is pronounced Six-Cent-Mihaly.
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