Featured
This week’s featured posts.
Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Bring Your Husband To Heel
It’s not so difficult.
Some years ago, Suellen and I were vacationing in England when we came across a tempest in a teapot in the local newspapers. It seems that a woman who was widely regarded as the best dog trainer in the country had written a book about husband training. Titled Bring Your Husband to Heel, the book suggested that training a husband was really not that different from training a dog. (Disclosure: I may have misremembered the book’s title. I can’t find it on the web.)
Letters to the editor in the local papers fell into three categories. The first group lamented, “This is terrible. It’s an insult to husbands.” The second group wrote, “This is terrible. It’s an insult to dogs.” The third group, which was composed only of women, wrote, “This is terrible. How dare she divulge our secrets?”
So what were the secrets? The essential advice was: Ignore bad behavior. Reward good behavior. As the author pointed out, dogs don’t really understand what they’ve done wrong, even if you tell them in a very loud voice. On the other hand, they do understand what it means to get a treat. If they need to behave a certain way to get a treat, then they’ll do it.
The secret to ignoring bad behavior is to not take it personally. With a dog, that’s easy. We usually don’t conclude that Fido is angry and vengeful just because he knocked over a lamp with a wagging tail. With a spouse, however, it’s harder. We may conclude that he or she is taking it out on us.
The author’s advice: get over it. Criticizing gets you nowhere. Telling a husband he’s messy doesn’t change the behavior. Besides, he probably already knew that. Telling him repeatedly doesn’t change the equation. So, ignore it and focus on rewarding the behaviors that you like. As “good” behaviors accumulate, they start to crowd out “bad” behaviors.
I was reminded of the book by one of David Brooks’ recent columns in the New York Times. Brooks tells the story of another Briton, Nick Crews, who wrote a letter telling his three grown children that they were “bitter disappointments” and he was sick and tired of them. The letter went viral (it’s known as the Crews Missile) and many parents, apparently, wished they had written it. As Brooks’ points out, however, “…no matter how emotionally satisfying these tirades may be, they don’t really work…. There’s a trove of research suggesting that it’s best to tackle negative behaviors obliquely, by redirecting attention toward different, positive ones.”
So the dog trainer apparently had it right. Want a better-behaved husband? Easy. Just give him treats.
Thinking With Your Thumbs – Part 1
Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?
Can we think with our thumbs? Well, metaphorically we do. When we use System 1 — our fast, automatic, energy-efficient thinking system — we use heuristics, shortcuts to get to an answer that is “good enough”. We often refer to heuristics as rules of thumb — rough and ready ways to deal with reality. (For a comparison of System 1 versus System 2, click here).
Our rules of thumb work most of the time but not all of the time. Psychologists have classified 17 different errors that we make when we use System 1. Let’s look at three today.
Satisficing and temporizing are two errors that often go hand in hand. Satisficing simply means that when we find a choice that’s good enough, we take it and don’t search any farther. (The definition of “good enough” is entirely up to you.) Defense lawyers regularly accuse the police of satsificing. The accusation goes something like this: “You found my client and decided that he committed the crime. You stopped looking for any other suspects. You let the real criminal get away.”
Temporizing is similar to satisficing but adds a time dimension. You’re temporizing when you choose an option that’s good enough for now. How much education do you need? Well, let’s say that you can get a good job immediately with only a Bachelor’s degree. It’s good enough for now. But, 20 years from now you may not be able to get the promotion you want because you don’t have a Master’s degree. You may regret that you temporized in your younger years.
If you ever hear someone say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” you may well conclude that they’re either satisficing or temporizing. Whatever “it” is, it’s good enough for now.
Availability is another error category that we encounter often. When we’re asked a difficult question, we often search our memory banks for cases that would help us develop an answer. If we can recall cases easily, we tend to overestimate the probability that the same phenomenon will occur again. In other words, if the cases are readily available (to our memory), we tend to exaggerate their probability. This is especially true with vivid memories. This is one reason that people tend to overestimate the crime rate in their communities. Recent crimes are readily recalled — you read about them in the papers every day. Gruesome crimes create vivid memories — thus, many people think that gruesome crimes occur far more frequently than they do.
Available memories don’t have to be recent. In fact, vivid memories can last for years and affect our judgment and behavior in subtle ways. Indeed, I still go easy on tequila because of vivid memories from college days.
Satsificing, temporizing, and availability are three rules of thumb that help us get through the day. They’re part of System 1 which we can’t turn off, so we’re always vulnerable to these types of errors. In general, the benefits of System 1 outweigh the costs but you should be aware of the costs. If the costs are getting out of hand, it’s time to switch on System 2.
I drew primarily on two sources for composing this article. First, Peter Facione’s Think Critically. (Click here) Second, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. (Click here).
Make a Brand Promise or Keep a Brand Promise?
I promise.
You have $10,000 left in your marketing budget. Should you use it to make a brand promise or to keep a brand promise?
It’s a tricky question and one that Bain & Company tries to answer in a newly released white paper. (Click here). As Bain points out, we often think of branding as a way to create an emotional attachment with a consumer. Bain suggests a different approach: we create brands to shift demand. With a strong brand, we may shift demand to higher prices or greater volume or, maybe, some of both.
As we build brands, we need to make brand promises. This often involves emotional advertising and direct marketing. On the other hand, for a mature brand in an established market, more advertising may deliver diminishing returns. Rather than shifting demand, we’re just spending money in a senseless arms race.
Bain gives four examples of fashion retailers that take very different approaches to brand promises. At one end of the spectrum, American Apparel and Benetton advertise heavily and often provocatively. In other words, they’re making promises. However, recent results — stagnant at best — suggest that they’re not keeping promises.
At the other end of the spectrum, Patagonia spends far less on advertising but has invested heavily in environmental causes. Patagonia’s strong word-of-mouth momentum focuses on promises kept. Similarly, the fashion retailer, Zara, does no advertising at all. Through smart locations, however, and short, fast production runs, they’ve built a strong company. The chatter about Zara also focuses on promises kept. For both Patagonia and Zara, the results have included faster growth and higher margins than almost all their competitors.
Bain argues that brand equity is really a brand’s power to shift demand. To illustrate, the authors review brand equity for 21 different product categories. (The research is based on discrete choice analysis, which I’ll describe in more detail in the near future). The research isolates different elements of the consumer decision — allowing us to compare the power of pricing, brand, and specific features. For MP3 players, for instance, the leading brand captures 38.5% of consumer choice based on brand alone. This compares to 13.9% for the second strongest brand. In other words, the leading brand was 2.9 times more powerful than the second brand in shifting demand.
Brands were powerful in both B2C and B2B categories. Many authors have suggested that brands are not as important in B2B categories — that B2B purchase decisions are not “emotional”. The Bain study suggests otherwise. As the authors write, “Companies have built strong brands even in … B2B … categories such as construction tools and medical devices. On construction sites, the loyalty to tool brands runs as deep as the passion that fashionistas demonstrate for their favorite jeans.”
Think about your brand — whether corporate or personal. Do you need to attract attention by making more brand promises? Or do you need to build loyalty by fulfilling brand promises? Either way, consider the power you have to shift demand simply by the way you behave.
Do Generals Stray More Than Teachers?
Do generals commit adultery more often than, say, elementary school teachers?
The way we answer this question says a lot about the way we think. If you’ve been reading about American generals recently, you know that a lot of top ranking officers have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The facts are easily available to you. You can recall them quickly. Indeed, they’re very likely top of mind. (One of my students asked, in mock horror, since when have generals taken orders from their privates?)
On the other hand, when was the last time you read about cheating primary school teachers? It’s probably been a long time, if ever. Why? Because stories about cheating teachers don’t sell many newspapers. Stories about cheating generals seize our attention and hold it. It’s a great way to sell newspapers, magazines, and TV shows.
So, it’s easy for you to remember stories about cheating generals. It’s much harder to remember stories about cheating teachers. Based on your ability to remember relevant cases, you might conclude that generals do indeed stray more often than teachers. Would you be right? Maybe … but maybe not. All you’ve really done is search your own memory banks. As we all know, memory is fallible and can easily play tricks on us.
When we’re asked a comparative question like generals versus teachers, we often try to answer a different question: how many cases of each can I readily recall? It’s an easier question to answer and doesn’t require us to search external sources and think hard thoughts. Though it’s easy, it’s often erroneous.
I think I saw this phenomenon in action during the recent presidential election. My friends who supported Obama tended to talk to other people who supported Obama. If you asked how many people would support Obama, they could readily retrieve many cases and conclude that Obama would win. Of course, my friends who supported Romney were doing exactly the same thing — talking with or listening to other Romney supporters. I heard one person say, “Of course Romney will win. Everybody hates Obama”. I suspect that everybody he talked to hated Obama. But that’s not the same as everybody.
Relying on easily available information can help create the political chasms that we see around us. If you read a lot of articles about intransigent Republicans, you may conclude that Republicans are more intransigent than Democrats. That may be true … or it could just be a product of what you remember. Similarly, if you read lots of articles about Democrats undercutting the military, you might come to believe …. well, you get the picture.
What should we do? First, remember that the easy answer is often the wrong answer. It depends on what we remember rather than what’s actually happening. Second, start reading more sources that “disagree” with your point of view. All information sources have some degree of bias. Reading widely can help you establish a balance. Third, study up on statistics. It will help you understand what’s accurate and what’s not.
By the way, this post is adapted from Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, easily the best book I’ve read this year. You can find it here.
(Note: I’ll teach a class on Applied Critical Thinking during the winter term at the University of Denver. Some of my teaching material will show up here in posts about how we think. They’ll all carry the tag, Applied Critical Thinking, so you can find them easily).
How To Be Unpersuasive
Not so fast!
Many of my articles focus on persuasion – how to persuade other people to do something because they want to do it. Today, let’s look at how not to be persuasive. I’ll again use Jay Conger’s article (click here), along with my own observations.
According to Conger, there are four common methods for being unpersuasive.
1) People attempt to make their case with the up-front hard sell. State your position and then sell it hard. When someone tries this on me, I just get stubborn. I’m not going to agree just because I don’t like their approach – even if I think there’s some merit to their argument. I push back simply because I don’t like to be pushed on.
2) They resist compromise. If you want me to agree with you, I first want to know that you take me seriously. I want to know that you’ll listen to me and accept my suggestions – at least some of them. If you blow off all my suggestions … well, no deal.
3) They think the secret of persuasion lies in presenting great arguments. I often run into this with technical people. They may think that the merits of their argument (or their product) are so clear and convincing, that they don’t need to “sell” the idea. It’s so obvious I’ll be compelled to agree. Again, I just don’t like to be compelled to do anything. Logic is necessary but not sufficient.
4) They assume persuasion is a one-shot effort. I’ve never been successful at selling much of anything with just one visit. The old wisdom still applies: listen first, establish your credibility, and then start to build your case … listening for concerns and suggestions as you do.
Bottom line: persuasion requires patience and persistence. Take your time.
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