Drawing attention to the wrong thing
A painting has been in the news recently.
Gina Reinhart, one of Australia’s wealthiest people, has petitioned the National Gallery of Australia to have the work removed.
Perversely, her request has generated so much media attention that many more people have seen the Vincent Namatjira painting than would have otherwise.
Barbra Streisand knows this all too well.
In 2003 she took legal action to remove an aerial image of her property from the twelve thousand other properties on...
Everybody thinks they can do your job. Nobody wants to.
When you work in HR, everyone thinks they can do your job.
But nobody wants to.
I’ve been in and around HR for most of my career, and witnessed time and again people saying it’s “an HR thing”.
Diversity.
Inclusion.
Culture.
Productivity.
Engagement.
Retention.
Leadership behaviour.
Birthday cakes.
The challenge is that your most public facing work seems fun, easy, even trivial.
Yet behind the scenes a different type of work goes on. Deeply personal, life...
How to get customers to buy more of your range
If you’d like to get customers to buy more from you, here’s an idea.
Make use of the Completeness Bias - our desire to complete something once we’ve started.
Like a jigsaw puzzle, for example.
An Italian vineyard was able to sell more across its range by matching wines to 5 stages of a dinner party.
But the best bit?
They represented these stages as a jigsaw puzzle that needed to be completed.
This DOUBLED their sales. Instead of 4 out of every 10 customers...
Before and after
Customers LOVE before and after pictures. But too many businesses get it wrong for one important psychological reason.
Using before and after imagery helps your customer understand the transformation that’s possible.
They work because they signal the “now” state. The problem state.
And then help us imagine how life will be better once we’ve done what it is you’re suggesting.
Life used to be like this, now it’s like this.
Here’s an example...
Tomatoes
When you eat a tomato from the supermarket it is unremarkable.Tasteless. Watery.
When you eat a homegrown tomato, it is vibrant. Sweet. Juicy.
It adds something to your day.
Guess which tomato most AI generated content reminds me of?
It takes more effort to grow your own, but goodness, what a payoff!
The future of work may be AI. Your future worth is not.
If you want to differentiate yourself and create real and sustainable value, you need to grow it yourself.
Why so much research is misleading
A tip when you are reading posts citing 'research' stats on what business leaders or consumers are doing.
Add "say they are" to most of the claims.
For example, "Nearly half of content marketers use AI to brainstorm new topics, and 46% use it to research headlines and keywords."
I'm guessing this stat is based on self-reported claims, so it should read: "Nearly half of content marketers SAY THEY use AI to brainstorm new topics, and 46% SAY THEY use it to research headlines and...
McDonalds salad
Healthy snacks in a vending machine can backfire, leading to more people choosing the unhealthy option.
This is an example of ‘vicarious goal fulfilment’, where doing a small thing makes us think we’ve done the big thing.
In this case, merely seeing the healthy option can be enough for us to indulge ourselves for our ‘good behaviour’.
McDonalds knows this. Sure, they have salads, but perhaps today you deserve the burger?
Vicarious goal fulfilment is...
Don't ask for yes
People like hearing yes, they don’t like saying it.
Chris Voss, a world class negotiator, shared this pearl in the Nudge podcast with Phill Agnew.
His point is we shouldn’t push for ‘yes’ because it makes people defensive.
Instead we should aim for ‘no’.
Rather than “Can we do this tomorrow?”, ask “Would you be against doing this tomorrow?”
Rather than “Is this a good time to talk?”, ask “Is now a bad time to...
The one word that will make you more persuasive
Adding one simple word can make you more persuasive.
In a famous 1978 Harvard University study, a researcher would attempt to cut in line to copy some pages at the library.
In some cases they said: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”
In others, they asked the same thing except for adding a simple word.
And this simple word made it 50% more likely they would be allowed to cut the line.
Here’s what they said.
...
Survivorship Bias
We only hear from people who succeed.
Even if they reveal a failure, it’s because they’ve made it through.
That’s Survivorship Bias.
We think they represent the average when in fact it’s strongly skewed.
And seeing so many others succeed, or seem to, can get disheartening.
Take comfort knowing that the average experience is not success.
It’s struggle.
If you'd like to struggle less, get in touch.
