[MUSIC] That leads us to the c in the abc's and those are the consequences. Very often we have interventions which we know are good for the company, but are they helping and solving problems of the people who are supposed to exhibit those behaviors? So I'll give you a couple examples, there's many companies that are now putting sales tools in the hands of their sales people, maybe hand held devices in the store. In one case, this is a company called car phone warehouse and the sales tool is supposed to make the decision process easier for the customer to provide the better choice. They're very much engaged in finding the best option for their customers. And surprise surprise, a lot of the sales people weren't accepting it as a tool. Why? It didn't seem to solve any of their behaviors. It was kind of a crutch. It didn't make them look like they were confident salespeople. It took more time, and they figured, you know what, I probably know what's right for the customer anyway. It got in the way of the personal interaction they felt. It was something that came between them and their customers. So you have to reframe the problem and if you think about in many cases now with this Internet, your customers know a lot more about the products they want than your salespeople. Go to a regular retailer, you've got thousands of products. The customer's probably looked up three of them on the Internet. They've researched them extensively and now they come to the salesperson to help them choose between the three. They probably haven't looked at those three in quite a while, and they look like knobs. Meaning they really don't know how to help you. When you reposition the sales tool that way, now it becomes an enabler for the person who's supposed to use this tool. So, for Car Phone Warehouse, where the brand is all about helping you find the best offer, you now have on brand behaviors by reframing the problem from the perspective of the user. And we see this all the time, when you look at getting teenagers to stop smoking, we can tell them all day long how it's bad for their health, they'll die at the age of 70 rather than at 85. You know what, that is so far in the future it's insignificant for them. What they did here in the UK, with some success, is to reframe the problem by having advertisements where they show girls powdering their nose not with powder, but with the ashes from an ash tray. Or people putting out cigarettes in terms of moisturizers, because it's bad for the skin. Young girls are very concerned about their looks, framing stopping to smoke in those terms made it more relevant. And it's very very difficult to get people to stop doing things in the first place. Because there is really no reward at the end of stopping it. So in terms of consequences, it lacks reward, right? What is the reward of stopping smoking? Well maybe you even have withdrawal symptoms. So there is a punishment. The rewards are so far in the future that they also don't become relevant. Can you bring them into the present? Now we talked a lot about purpose in this MOOC and the good thing is purpose really matters. So it turns out health providers don't wash their hands as often as they should. Some estimates they only wash them about one third of the time. In terms of how often they should, that is not great news. But how do we actually get them to change? So here's the intervention we have to remind them at the moment of washing your hands. So in the bathroom. We know for example from seatbelt studies, if I tell you to put on your seatbelt and the reasons why just before you get in the car, most people actually voluntarily do it. If I only do it five minutes before the compliance is much lower, so that part is taken care of and in one condition they asked healthcare providers, in a sign, they said hygiene prevents you from catching a disease. And in the other one it says hygiene prevents your patients from catching a disease. Now interestingly enough, maybe some what surprising to you, when it was about your health, there was no change in the amount of soap used in those bathrooms, meaning people didn't change their soap use behavior. If it was about their patients, soap usage went up about a third of the time. So if you think about that purpose, about helping others, that can be quite powerful. Now consequences are also, when it's about those little steps, especially if the rewards are far in the future. Can you think of highlighting the smaller rewards along the way? So here's a study done by my colleague at Columbia University Ran Kivetz and his collaborators. And they went into the student coffee shop and there are these coffee cards and one of them had nine different places to put a stamp. So each time you stamp it, if you have nine stamps you get a free coffee. The other one and the change is quite subtle, had 12 areas to stamp, but three of them were already stamped. Now, you might say that's ridiculous. They're practically the same, both have nine stamps, I should see no difference of behavior. But what they found was, there was a 34% increase in the number of cards, they had little numbers on the back, they could track this, that were redeemed. Meaning people actually got nine stamps, when three were already stamped. And it was done about four-and-a-half days faster. Now, why is that the case? Well, if you already partially have achieved your goal, you're already on the way and that's a really interesting aspect. We tend to think about, in change management, about raising the bar, right? We keep on raising the bar a little bit, but what they're doing is they're raising the floor, you're already on the way, you're further along to your goal. You've already achieved something, you're more likely to continue it. And that's really about this idea and here's a wonderful quote, motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going. And if you think about the Nike Fuelband and all those personal fitness devices they're all motivational devices. They continually highlight, not only do they allow you to schedule certain goals, they track your progress along the way and after you've done this for a while they become habits. [MUSIC]
