Behavior and Incentives – Establishing a Sticky Habit and Culture

Setting up an incentive to promote good behavior is a common practice across the spectrum. Whether it’s at work or being a dad to a 5-year-old, it’s a great way to motivate people and hopefully cultivate a good habit in the long run. But will it really? 

Simply throwing incentives to promote good behavior creates a culture driven by carrots and sticks. Good habits and good culture are hard to inculcate. However, they are easier to copy from others. Through personal experiences, both at work and home, I have observed that leading by example and recognizing good habits in others help create a culture of good behavior. Do it enough times and consistently to make it second nature. I know that it’s easier said than done, but when’s a good thing really easy?

Managing The Unexpected

I recently read the book, Managing the Unexpected, by Weick and Sutcliffe. The book is a collection of case studies of organizations and people dealing with emergencies; disastrous emergencies. It tries to get to the bottom of what caused them and if they could have been avoided. Were there any signals way before the disaster struck? The book then goes on to show what organizations can do to become resilient and be better prepared to manage the unexpected.

One thing that I have picked up from this book is to treat a near miss as a  failure. Not to heave a sigh of relief that we got lucky and then move on, but treat it as a disaster and understand how we got so close to it. Worth a read.

Clarity Trumps Cleverness

In communication, clarity trumps everything and most of all cleverness. Clarity determines the style, the length, the time and mode of communication.

This is true in other areas as well. As a programmer in my “other” life, I learned early on that if you use smart logic or lines of code to accomplish some tasks, ensure that you comment in detail because when you’ll see that code after few weeks, you’ll have a tough time figuring out what it does.

Clarity brings purpose into focus and enhances engagement. True for clients, true for life.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

Sometimes the difference between a good idea and a bad idea is in the execution.

In marketing and other areas of growing a business, two people may execute an idea along a same line but may see very different results. Let me explain this with an example.

E-mail nurturing is a powerful way to engage with your prospects to grow business. Two different organizations send out relevant emails to their prospects on the same day and yet have very different results. Here are tiny details that I have seen can make a huge difference.

  1. Time when the email is sent out. Is it sent out immediately when a prospect shows interest or an hour later? We have seen that best results are seen when an email is sent immediately while they are still on your website or toying with your product. An hour later, in some cases even 30 minutes later will not show the same result because someone else may have engaged them already.
  2. Both sent relevant content. But one personalized it further by job title or the industry the prospect belongs to.
  3. One sent an HTML email that screams, “marketing content!” and the other a plain text email that seems more personalized and a better chance of being delivered and read.

These seemingly minor differences can draw a line between success and failure.

We See What We Want To See

In an age of data overload and analytics we swear by, I am reminded that caution is in order.

A quick snapshot into analytics can be very misleading; it can tell you where you are, but may completely fail to tell you where you are headed. If you are doing a correlation, sometimes, strange data sets or events may seem related and may totally mislead you.

Autism-Organic

Approach analytics with a child like curiosity and intensity. No hunches or premonitions. Scan the length and breadth of the data and be wary of snapshots. Otherwise, we’ll see what we want to see.

What Do You Do When You Hit A Wall?

When you hit a wall, what do you do? Do you take the easy way out or do you stick in there and dig?

There’s a lot that you can do by playing on the surface. But that won’t make a difference. You’ll have to roll your sleeves and dig in deep. You’ll have to get out of your comfort zone and explore new ideas and strategies. If you are not sweating and not feeling the pain, the walls are not going to shrink.

So, when you hit a wall, don’t squirm around, dig in!

Who Did You Design That Website For?

I have seen many businesses focus so much on the visual appeal of their websites that the functional appeal is either lost or compromised.

First impression is important, but everlasting impression is the goal and that is achieved through great user experience.

If you sell pet food, there’s no reason why your website should look like a web designer’s portfolio.

The path less travelled – taking a different approach

Sometimes changing the way we approach a challenge can make all the difference. We can buy a dvd and try to learn ice skating on computer or get out there on the ince rink and learn as you fall and skid.

Nothing motivates like success. From time to time we get comfortable and cozy, in other words lazy and that eventually drags us down. Get out of your comfort zone, keep pushing your envelope a bit every now and then. And when you do that and you achieve success I believe that is the biggest motivator of all. It adds new energey to take on new tasks and challenges.

Photo: Courtesy America’s Ice Garden