Who's broken their New Year's resolution? ALL. OF. US. (Ok, MOST of us) And there's a simple reason for it. We just don't know where to start or it seems too overwhelming. 8 years' ago mine was 'lose 28lbs'. I didn't, until 3 years' later I looked into the work of Richard Thaler and the new (slightly smug) slimmer me then started applying this stuff to my communication skills coaching. The cake... well, I'll come onto that.
There's a statistic out there that unless action is taken within 72 hours of a directive, there is an 80% chance it won't happen. Which kind of makes sense (we all remember the days of leaving our homework to the last week of the school summer break, then happily 'the dog' ate most of our unfinished essays). In business we often end meetings with 'let's make that happen' or 'start rolling that out', or my favourite, 'so let's think about that' - and we all suck on a thoughtful tooth for 20 seconds then happily forget it. The result is NOTHING HAPPENS.
Enter Richard Thaler, behavioural economist and Nobel prize winner for economics.
Thaler created 'Nudge Theory' (forget Harry Potter this is PROPER MAGIC), working with governments to get better buy in on huge public issues. The 'nudge' concept describes how subtle changes in 'choice architecture' can predictably influence behaviour without restricting options or altering economic/business incentives. A nice example is automatic enrolment in pensions schemes rather than having to opt in - huge shift suddenly in pension contributions. His work directly influenced the same behavioural nudge for 'organ donation'.
How can we translate Thaler's work into ACTION in Business?
Thaler often worked subliminally - action happened straight away and the results were often seismic. 'let's roll that out' is an untouchable generic directive, as is 'enjoy life' or 'have less stress' often listed in New Year's resolutions. How do we access those things and get started in a way that seems easy?
The subliminal thing we can't do, BUT we can take a direct lesson into business, by asking what is the first, practical and timed step that accesses 'rolling it out,' or 'making it happen'? Ideally it should be done within 72 hours to increase the chances of action. So it could be 'we need feedback from the UK partners. The first thing we need is a pulse survey'... BUT that's STILL TOO VAGUE... make it smaller, easier and timed until nobody has 'wriggle-room'.
Here's where the cake comes in...(bear with me)
When we ask delegates 'what's the first step to baking a cake?' 90% say 'buy the ingredients', but that's not the first step, neither is 'choosing a recipe'... keep taking it back a step and probably the VERY first step to baking a cake is confirming 'who's coming/what's the event?' - is it Thanksgiving or a kid's birthday or Christmas? It's the same in business - often we suggest the eqivalent of 'buying ingredients'.
Back to the business example... needing that pulse survey
A great approach is to ask yourself 'what needs to happen to make that happen? Probably the answer is compiling the questions, so 'what needs to happen to make that happen?' possibly suggestions from each department head, sooooo 'what needs to happen to make that happen?' - an email will go out today to all department heads, we need a minimum of 3 questions from each and have that back to me by (insert day within 3 days). Suddenly easier and more likely to happen.
In summary - even if the directive is HUGE, at the end of a meeting or presentation make the first step SMALL, TIMED and PRACTICAL. Thaler suggests once we are on a path of action, we're more likely to stay on it. If the path is unclear, we could become inert or worse... go the wrong way.
That's it I'm off to eat cake. My New Year's resolution was to eat more of it. Going to work out the first step to make that happen....