Category Archives: Behavior

Visceral visuals make people care

A picture speaks louder than words.

The above object claims the lives of an estimated 2 million people a year and has wrecked more global havoc than some wars: The Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

The above illustration won first place in the “Illustrations” category of the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge appearing in the18 February 2011, issue of Science, published by AAAS.

You would think that a guy would come up with something a little less hair-raising that this, but being that it’s one of the worst human killers there are, I get the point. One judge even said:

“You have this gaping mouth that almost looks like it’s ready to eat you the way AIDS is eating away at society.”

Oh yes it does. And the fact that you can visualize and see it gives you goose bumps. Doesn’t it make you want to eradicate it that much more?

An illustration for a business/institutional killer?

It got me wondering, if we were to create an illustration of the #1 company/institutional killer of all what would it be? What would it look like? How can me make it so visceral that simply showing it to business/government leaders would raise their hair and make them question what they’re doing.

Something so visual that it would make them go: “That’s what’s eating away at our organization? Let’s make sure it doesn’t eat us up.”

In other words, it makes them care. Can you imagine the look on their faces?

I’ve been dreaming of this myself 🙂

So, any ideas?

Illustrations of HIV, Quasars, and Fungi Win Science Visualization Challenge | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)

Why ‘Delivering Happiness’ is a must-do

Jorge in Behavior, Customer Service, Leadership, Psychology

happiness

Making people happy is such a radical idea that it’s a sad thing to see when people are seeking help on how to be more decent to humans. That’s why delivering happiness is not business as usual. I’ve previously written about how Zappos has designed their business model around the idea of ‘delivering happiness’. Yet there’s still a lot of doubt around this ‘radical’ concept, see this Forbes article that asks: is employee happiness a corporate responsibility?

When I see questions such as these I cringe. Well of course it is! Seriously, why would anybody want to work at a place that makes them unhappy? I understand answering this questions is a lot more complicated because it deals with human nature, but it really doesn’t have to be. Grab a pen and paper, an important idea is coming up…

A recent Fast Company article backs this up. According to a study by David Rand of Harvard: People who spend time with happy people are more likely to become happy themselves.

Think about that for a second. Is that something too complex to understand? Do we really need this type of research to understand something so human? No. We don’t really need this type of research to know that hanging out with happy people will makes us more happy. Or that making unhappy people happy makes us happier. It’s common sense!

And that’s not all. Even more telling is that sadness is twice as infectious as happiness. No surprise here either, as an unhappy customer is more likely to tell five people how much your product or services sucks as opposed to telling just one. And by the way, this also includes your employees. Their part of the equation too.

With so much at stake, why can’t we get our heads around that happiness is actually simple?

Here’s the problem: Organizations have a lot of ‘business sense’ but not a lot of ‘common sense’.

Simply understanding that happiness and sadness are contagious should be enough for any organization to treat their people and their customers with decency. Would you rather be know for spreading sadness than happiness? Didn’t think so!

The BIG idea is very simple then: make people happy. Why? Because if your employees are are happy then your customers will be happy. It’s a win-win scenario. Everyone is happy and it all originated from you. That’s what people will remember, trust me Smile

Why culture matters

Jorge in Behavior, entrepreneurship, Greatness, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

Last week I was dinning at an Italian restaurant with my family. Our waiter was very courteous, by pure observation I could tell he stood out from the rest of the waiters in that restaurant. Two days later I dined at a ‘similar’ Italian restaurant with a few friends, and to my surprise got served by the same waiter that served me days earlier at the other restaurant.

What gives?…

How to change people’s behavior by tweaking the environment

Jorge in Behavior, Innovation, Psychology, Strategy

The interesting discussion we had about innovation being a matter of age brought up a lot of insights. One in particular, was that to breed innovation, an environment is more important than the age of the innovator. How this works is a little complicated to understand, but let me explain how a cognitive bias impedes us from seeing change coming from our environment, and then use some examples of how tweaking the environment makes change simple.…

To @Dell: Please pay attention to your customers

Jorge in Behavior, Customer Service, Marketing

I apologize in advance, this is a rant.

I’ve been a loyal Dell customer for 7 years now, never had a problem until a few weeks a go. In the last month and a half I’ve been without my laptop for 4 weeks. A laptop that is only 10 months old has been to Dell twice. It’s had the mainboard, the fan, the heatsink and even the keyboard replaced. Can’t figure that last one out but ok thank you, too bad the real problem I sent it back to you isn’t fixed yet.

BEA-utiful!

Don’t want to get into details as to why my laptop has been to repair center twice but let’s just say that XPS 1640’s have ‘loud fan’ issues and mine got the bug after I sent it the first time to Dell. Getting a bug on your laptop isn’t a very nice thing. I had to go to the Virus Removal Australia company to get the bug removed. It didn’t have this problem when I bought in December so why all of the sudden does it load the system fan even when idle? You have no answer. Worse yet this has been going on for awhile so it’s not like it’s a new issue, yet you didn’t let me know about it. You said you would fix it, didn’t tell me how but ok sounds good I’ll wait it out again since it’s under warranty.

A few days after I requested a dispatch to send my laptop back for another round I got an email from one of your XPS tech support reps asking me to send detailed information on what the problem is, which I gladly did. Anyway, I get my laptop back today and the problem persists and it makes me feel as though you changed the parts and sent it back to me without taking the time to see if the problem was fixed.

What’s worse about all of this is how you’ve wasted my time and yours too.

Why don’t you call me and ask me what’s wrong with it while you have it with you to make sure you’re covering all the bases? Why don’t you send me an email to tell me what you’re going to do to it similar to when a person goes into surgery? Why do you just send it back to me with the problem knowing that I’m probably going to call you back and request it get fixed again?

I could go on and on with questions but the point is you’re ignoring me, your loyal customer. And that my dear Dell is a BIG no-n0!

Anyways, tomorrow I’ll be calling you back with the same request. I hope you’re in it for another round because I plan on getting my laptop back to the state it was when I bought it, flawless!

Good nite for now, I’ll let you catch your breath and meditate on how this affects your future relationship with me 😉

How to fight the confirmation bias

Jorge in Behavior, Innovation, Psychology

“It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.” – Caius Valerius Catullus

Aha! you got an idea and you want to do some research to know if you’re idea has wings. You setup google alerts, hashtags about related topics on twitter, follow people in the know, join related groups on Linkedin, etc. You know the drill!

Soon after you start receiving information, this information looks familiar to you, it makes sense. Other people are talking about the same thing, you engage them and start exchanging ideas which start taking on a life of their own. This confirms your hunch, you get more excited because your idea has wings. Bangarang! you’re sure to be a gazillionaire!

Sound familiar?

This is the confirmation bias.

Whenever we have an idea, instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Once we see a pattern we do not easily let go of it, we keep digging and digging to see that pattern more and more. Sometimes there isn’t even a pattern there but we somehow ‘want’ to believe there is. You know all too well how this plays out in any organization.

Let’s change that. Time to turn off your lizard brain and engage your critical, truth seeking side of your brain.

In order to fight the confirmation bias let’s do the opposite: learn to spend as much time looking for ‘evidence’ that we are wrong as we spend searching for reasons that we are correct.

It’s not fun trying to prove we’re not the hotshots we think we are but the truth shall set you free.

Confirmation Bias ” You Are Not So Smart (youarenotsosmart.com)
The Nature of Consensus (theness.com)
Top Ten Underapreciated Aspects of Human Nature (unreasonablefaith.com)

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An illustration for a business/institutional killer?

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