More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know.
Sometimes when things go right, we think we know why, but do we really? That the result went the way you wanted does not mean you can repeat it over and over.
You have to be careful what you think you know. Assumptions, you see, even when based on sound research, can lead us astray.
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. When I mention manipulation, this is not necessarily pejorative; it’s a very common and fairly benign tactic. In fact, many of us have been doing it since we were young. “I’ll be your best friend” is the highly effective negotiating tactic employed by generations of children to obtain something they want from a peer. And as any child who has ever handed over candy hoping for a new best friend will tell you, it works.
Typical manipulations include: dropping the price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure or aspirational messages; and promising innovation to influence behavior—be it a purchase, a vote or support.
Once buyers get used to paying a lower-than-average price for a product or service, it is very hard to get them to pay more. And the sellers, facing overwhelming pressure to push prices lower and lower in order to compete, find their margins cut slimmer and slimmer. This only drives a need to sell more to compensate. And the quickest way to do that is price again.
Breakage measures the percentage of customers who fail to take advantage of a promotion and end up paying full price for a product instead. This typically happens when buyers don’t bother performing the necessary steps to claim their rebates, a process purposely kept complicated or inconvenient to increase the likelihood of mistakes or inaction to keep that breakage number up.
When fear is employed, facts are incidental. Deeply seated in our biological drive to survive, that emotion cannot be quickly wiped away with facts and figures. This is how terrorism works. It’s not the statistical probability that one could get hurt by a terrorist, but it’s the fear that it might happen that cripples a population.
Though positive in nature, aspirational messages are most effective with those who lack discipline or have a nagging fear or insecurity that they don’t have the ability to achieve their dreams on their own
Someone who lives a healthy lifestyle and is in a habit of exercising does not respond to “six easy steps to losing weight.” It’s those who don’t have the lifestyle that are most susceptible. It’s not news that a lot of people try diet after diet after diet in an attempt to get the body of their dreams. And no matter the regime they choose, each comes with the qualification that regular exercise and a balanced diet will help boost results. In other words, discipline.
Peer pressure works not because the majority or the experts are always right, but because we fear that we may be wrong.
Just as manipulations can drive a sale but not create loyalty, so too can they help a candidate get elected, but they don’t create a foundation for leadership. Leadership requires people to stick with you through thick and thin. Leadership is the ability to rally people not for a single event, but for years.
Manipulations are a perfectly valid strategy for driving a transaction, or for any behavior that is only required once or on rare occasions. The rewards the police use are designed to incentivize witnesses to come forward to provide tips or evidence that may lead to an arrest. And, like any promotion, the manipulation will work if the incentive feels high enough to mitigate the risk.
When manipulations are the norm, no one wins.
It’s not an accident that doing business today, and being in the workforce today, is more stressful than it used to be. Peter Whybrow, in his book American Mania: When More Is Not Enough, argues that many of the ills that we suffer from today have very little to do with the bad food we’re eating or the partially hydrogenated oils in our diet. Rather, Whybrow says, it’s the way that corporate America has developed that has increased our stress to levels so high we’re literally making ourselves sick because of it.
The danger of manipulations is that they work. And because manipulations work, they have become the norm, practiced by the vast majority of companies and organizations, regardless of size or industry.
WHAT: Every single company and organization on the planet knows WHAT they do. This is true no matter how big or small, no matter what industry. Everyone is easily able to describe the products or services a company sells or the job function they have within that system. WHATs are easy to identify.
HOW: Some companies and people know HOW they do WHAT they do. Whether you call them a “differentiating value proposition,” “proprietary process” or “unique selling proposition,” HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better.
WHY: Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do. When I say WHY, I don’t mean to make money—that’s a result. By WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief? WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?
We say WHAT we do, we sometimes say HOW we do it, but we rarely say WHY we do WHAT we do.
It’s worth repeating: people don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.
Their products, unto themselves, are not the reason Apple is perceived as superior; their products, WHAT Apple makes, serve as the tangible proof of what they believe. It is that clear correlation between WHAT they do and WHY they do it that makes Apple stand out. This is the reason we perceive Apple as being authentic.
Why the product exists must first be considered and why someone wants it must match.
When a WHY goes fuzzy, it becomes much more difficult to maintain the growth, loyalty and inspiration that helped drive the original success.
In all cases, going back to the original purpose, cause or belief will help these industries adapt. Instead of asking, “WHAT should we do to compete?” the questions must be asked, “WHY did we start doing WHAT we’re doing in the first place, and WHAT can we do to bring our cause to life considering all the technologies and market opportunities available today?”
Our need to belong is not rational, but it is a constant that exists across all people in all cultures. It is a feeling we get when those around us share our values and beliefs. When we feel like we belong we feel connected and we feel safe. As humans we crave the feeling and we seek it out.
Our desire to feel like we belong is so powerful that we will go to great lengths, do irrational things and often spend money to get that feeling.
But when a company clearly communicates their WHY, what they believe, and we believe what they believe, then we will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to include those products or brands in our lives. This is not because they are better, but because they become markers or symbols of the values and beliefs we hold dear. Those products and brands make us feel like we belong and we feel a kinship with others who buy the same things.
Our natural need to belong also makes us good at spotting things that don’t belong. It’s a sense we get. A feeling. Something deep inside us, something we can’t put into words, allows us to feel how some things just fit and some things just don’t.
Rely heavily on feelings.
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us. Those whom we consider great leaders all have an ability to draw us close and to command our loyalty. And we feel a strong bond with those who are also drawn to the same leaders and organizations.
The part of the brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language. It is this disconnection that makes putting our feelings into words so hard.
This is where “gut decisions” come from. They just feel right. There is no part of the stomach that controls decision-making, it all happens in the limbic brain. It’s not an accident that we use that word “feel” to explain those decisions either. The reason gut decisions feel right is because the part of the brain that controls them also controls our feelings.
When you force people to make decisions with only the rational part of their brain, they almost invariably end up “overthinking.” These rational decisions tend to take longer to make, says Restak, and can often be of lower quality. In contrast, decisions made with the limbic brain, gut decisions, tend to be faster, higher-quality decisions.
I don't agree. You can't undermine rational decisions just because you "just feel right" with your gut decisions. Some of the things in life require rational decisions and deep thinking.
This is one of the primary reasons why teachers tell students to go with their first instinct when taking a multiple-choice test, to trust their gut.
???? What kind of teacher saying that? Lol
Companies that fail to communicate a sense of WHY force us to make decisions with only empirical evidence. This is why those decisions take more time, feel difficult or leave us uncertain. Under these conditions manipulative strategies that exploit our desires, fears, doubts or fantasies work very well. We’re forced to make these less-than-inspiring decisions for one simple reason—companies don’t offer us anything else besides the facts and figures, features and benefits upon which to base our decisions.
Products are not just symbols of what the company believes, they also serve as symbols of what the loyal buyers believe. People with Apple laptop computers, for example, love opening them up while sitting in an airport. They like that everyone knows they are using a Mac. It’s an emblem, a symbol of who they are. That glowing Apple logo speaks to something about them and how they see the world.
Products with a clear sense of WHY give people a way to tell the outside world who they are and what they believe.
Manipulations can motivate the outcome of an election, but they don’t help choose who should lead. To lead requires those who willingly follow. It requires those who believe in something bigger than a single issue. To inspire starts with the clarity of WHY.
The only way people will know what you believe is by the things you say and do, and if you’re not consistent in the things you say and do, no one will know what you believe.
Just producing high-quality products and marketing them does not guarantee success. Authenticity cannot be achieved without clarity of WHY. And authenticity matters.
When our decisions feel right, we’re willing to pay a premium or suffer an inconvenience for those products or services. This has nothing to do with price or quality. Price, quality, features and service are important, but they are the cost of entry in business today. It is those visceral limbic feelings that create loyalty.
Loyalty, real emotional value, exists in the brain of the buyer, not the seller.
When WHY, HOW, and WHAT are in balance, authenticity is achieved and the buyer feels fulfilled. When they are out of balance, stress or uncertainty exists. When that happens, the decisions we make will also be out of balance. Without WHY, the buyer is easily motivated by aspiration or fear.
Trust does not emerge simply because a seller makes a rational case why the customer should buy a product or service, or because an executive promises change. Trust is not a checklist. Fulfilling all your responsibilities does not create trust. Trust is a feeling, not a rational experience. We trust some people and companies even when things go wrong, and we don’t trust others even though everything might have gone exactly as it should have. A completed checklist does not guarantee trust.
Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.
Trust dimulai saat kita merasa bahwa pihak lain melakukan sesuatu karena motivasi yang lebih besar daripada dirinya sendiri.
You can’t convince someone you have value, just as you can’t convince someone to trust you. You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs.
a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief, and WHATs are the results of those actions.
No one likes to lose, and most healthy people live their life to win. The only variation is the score we use. For some it’s money, for others it’s fame or awards. For some it’s power, love, a family or spiritual fulfillment. The metric is relative, but the desire is the same.
So the logic follows, the goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.
As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This is all fine and good; the problem is, which attitude? What if their attitude is not one that fits your culture?
