The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence (5 page)

B
usiness rarely stands still, and when change happens, it can often occur at lightning speed, throwing unexpected challenges in our way. A sudden acquisition can mean that today’s competitor will be tomorrow’s colleague. A change in a business model can result in a long-standing rival emerging as the perfect joint venture partner. A seemingly straightforward company restructure can lead to the merging of departments that previously didn’t see eye-to-eye.

Marriages like these can be challenging at the best of times. And even more so if those concerned have previously gone to great lengths to differentiate themselves from an adversary that they now find to be an associate. So when a wedding of opponents occurs, what small steps can be taken that will encourage people to accept former rivals as part of the new family, cooperate with new colleagues, work collaboratively, and embrace joint efforts?

One potential answer comes from another group of individuals who are notorious for their fierce rivalries—sports fans.

Rivalry and competitiveness is par for the course in sport. It’s something that pretty much every fan recognizes, with the fiercest of cases reserved for the longest standing of foes. Think the Yankees and the Red Sox. The Celtics and the Lakers. Barcelona and Real Madrid. The Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers.

The intensity can be such that it’s hard to imagine that rivals like these would be willing to cooperate on anything. But a wonderful series of studies by British psychologist Mark Levine suggests that even in the most extreme of cases, there are some things that bind rather than divide us.

Levine first asked a group of English soccer fans, who happened to be staunch Manchester United supporters, to complete a questionnaire asking them to write down what they liked about their team. After completing the questionnaire, they were then asked to walk to another building on the university campus to take part in the next stage of the study. En route to the building, the Manchester United supporters witnessed a passing jogger (who was actually part of the study) tripping and seemingly injuring themself. Sometimes the jogger would be wearing a plain white shirt. At other times, he was wearing a Manchester United football shirt. And sometimes the jogger was wearing (rather bravely in our opinion) the shirt of Manchester United’s fiercest rival, Liverpool.

Strategically placed observers, clipboards at the ready, stood by to count how many of the Manchester United supporters stopped and helped. It turns out that, if you go out jogging and are unlucky enough to sustain an injury, the shirt you are wearing can have a pretty big influence over whether you receive any help. In the study, about a third of the Manchester United supporters stopped to help when the injured jogger wore the plain white T-shirt. As you would have guessed, when they saw that the injured party was one of their own and wearing a Manchester United shirt, the overwhelming majority helped.

But what happened when the jogger wore the shirt of rival club Liverpool? Very few Manchester United fans stopped to help, providing strong evidence of people’s tendency to help most those they see as belonging to their immediate in-group.

Happily though, a small change in circumstances can make people much more open to assisting and accommodating those that they initially see as outsiders. When the study was repeated and Manchester United supporters were first asked what they liked about being soccer supporters rather than just what they liked about their team, they were twice as likely to help someone wearing a rival shirt.

So the
SMALL
BIG here is that, when it comes to encouraging cooperation and partnership, focusing on shared identities becomes important. As a result, managers and leaders looking to encourage an atmosphere of cooperation and support amongst their teams would be advised to take extra time to focus attention on the things that their teams share. On what binds, rather than what divides them.

But is there a way for us to maximize the favorable impact of similarities? Yes.

Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School of Business and author of the acclaimed bestseller
Give and Take
, suggests a solution that requires a simple shift in the
type
of commonality to which we direct our efforts.

Instead of asking people to focus on the common similarities that they share with new colleagues, new teams, and new department members, he instead advises that they identify and highlight
uncommon
commonalities. That is, they focus on those features they share in common with a new colleague that are rare to other external groups. Identifying these uncommon commonalities—especially early in the process of relationship building—potentially fulfills people’s desire both to fit in and, yet, to stand out (in this case, from other competitive groups) at the same time.

One way that managers can help to draw out these uncommon commonalities would be to encourage team members to fill out getting-to-know-you forms before any formal work is done. Note that it would probably be a mistake to ask questions like, “Name your favorite TV show” or “List your favorite travel destination,” because any similarities that are discovered are likely to be fairly common. Instead the advice is to ask team members to make lists that are, say, five or ten items long. In the case of favorite TV shows it is much more likely that, with the longer lists, team members will find that their colleagues also enjoy some of the same undiscovered or ratings-challenged shows that they too enjoy.

Whether it is a simple department restructure or the merging of two industry giants, it takes time for the dust of major change to settle. It seems that the act of encouraging newly formed team members to actively seek out examples of uncommon commonalities, while small, could prove to be a big step that speeds up cooperation, collaboration, and partnership.

T
he Newlywed Game
is an American game show that first aired in 1966. Given that nearly five decades later it’s still going strong in syndicated reruns, the show, in which newly married couples answer a series of increasingly revealing questions about each other to demonstrate how well they know each other (or not), clearly hit on a winning formula.
2

The ability to predict people’s preferences, wants, and needs is not a skill solely limited to the domains of TV shows like the
Newlywed Game
. It can be an important part of any influence strategy, too. It can also be challenging, especially during the early stages of a relationship when relatively little may be known about your influence target’s likes, dislikes, and preferences. Fortunately, any concerns about the shortcomings that exist in our knowledge of new customers and clients will surely be allayed by the feeling that we have comprehensive knowledge about our longer-term ones, those folks with whom we have interacted and done business over time. And one of the major benefits of developing longer-term relationships and arranging regular contact with people is that it seemingly becomes easier to predict their needs and preferences over time.

But it turns out that this might not always be the case. Even in situations where we have known someone for a long time and claim to be pretty good at predicting their likes, dislikes, needs, and preferences, sometimes we are anything but good. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the longer we know someone, the less likely it is that we will be able to accurately predict their preferences.

In one series of studies by behavior scientists Benjamin Scheibehenne, Jutta Mata, and Peter Todd, people were asked to rate 118 different items on a scale of 1 (don’t like it at all) to 4 (like it very much). In addition, these same people were also asked to predict how a person with whom they shared a relationship would rate those same 118 items. Some people in the study were asked to make preference predictions for people they had known for a relatively short time (the average relationship length in this group was around two years) and others were asked to make predictions for those that they had known for much longer (the average relationship length in this group was over ten years).

The 4-point scale that the researchers employed was an important part of the study because it meant that a complete stranger completing the questions could, on average, be expected to get 25 percent of their predictions correct just by chance. Fortunately, and one suspects to everyone’s relief, both groups in the study were able to predict the likes and dislikes of someone they knew better than a complete stranger could.

But…not
that
much better.

Those who were asked to predict the preferences of people they had known for an average of two years were accurate 42 percent of the time. Amazingly, those who predicted the preferences of someone whom they had known for over ten years didn’t fare nearly as well, with an accuracy rate of just 36 percent.

But perhaps the most telling result of all was how little awareness anyone had of how little they actually knew about people. In the pre-study tests that the researchers conducted, both groups believed that they would be able to predict the likes, dislikes, and preferences with at least 60 percent accuracy. Of course the question to ask at this point is why.

It turns out that there are potentially several reasons why having a longer-standing relationship with another person could lead to
reduced
rather than
increased
levels of understanding of their likes, dislikes, and preferences. One obvious explanation concerns the fact that a large amount of our learning and knowledge exchanges with others occurs in the early stages of relationships, when the motivation to get to know each other is quite high. As time passes, so might those higher levels of motivation, with the result that exchanges of new information occur less regularly. Therefore, some changes in a person’s circumstances and situations could go unnoticed.

Another potential explanation for why people in longer-term relationships are sometimes less able to predict a partner’s preferences is that people in long-standing relationships typically consider themselves to be more committed to each other by virtue of the extended time they have each invested. As a result, they may think that they know each other better than is actually the case and consequently become less likely to notice changes in attitudes and preferences, especially those that occur slowly or subtly.

There is also evidence to suggest that, in some instances, people who have developed longer-term relationships may be tempted to tell white lies to each other or avoid frank and candid conversations. The telling of white lies and the avoidance of candid conversations could serve to fulfill an important relationship protection function and, in that context, is understandable. However, strategies that serve to protect long-term relationships could lead to a decline in understanding and a dilution of knowledge that could serve to damage the relationship. So while it might be the case that getting older may lead us to be wiser in some domains, such wisdom doesn’t necessarily extend to relationships, unless a process is put in place to ensure a continuous and honest exchange of likes, dislikes, and preferences with those with whom we share long-term relationships. Such a process seems not only sensible but healthy too.

Such an approach could also help in your business interactions. Imagine someone who works in a business development role selling their company’s services to purchasing managers. Alternatively, imagine an account manager working in a services agency. In both cases it is likely that the people working in these roles will have already invested large amounts of time and effort in order to establish productive and profitable relationships with their customers. It is also possible that folks who work in these sorts of roles will prefer to be the single point of contact for their customers and clients. After all, they know best.

But this research suggests that occasionally inviting a colleague who knows the client less well to meetings could lead to the uncovering of some big new opportunities because that colleague might well end up asking new questions that the experienced executive or manager would not be able to ask without losing credibility, as they would be expected to already know the answers.

Similarly, training departments in customer-centric organizations could arrange for new recruits to work-shadow not only the organization’s
best
performers but also the organization’s
longest-standing
performers, potentially realizing two benefits. The new recruit would gain valuable experience interacting with customers, and the longer-standing employee would gain valuable new insights from a customer they may have known for many years. The
SMALL
BIG is that regardless of whether you are interacting with a long-standing customer or a longtime business partner, the importance of arranging for regular exchanges of new information and informal catch-ups cannot be overstated.

L
et me see,” said the health center manager, reading from a sheet of paper. “Last month we had 353 and the month before that 309. They usually average around 300 a month I suppose. It can be a real problem.”

She was talking about patient “no-shows”—or DNAs (Did Not Attends) as they are more commonly known in healthcare industry parlance—people who schedule an appointment and then fail to show up. It turns out that the problem of people failing to attend appointments isn’t just limited to inner city health centers or, more broadly, the healthcare industry. As noted in this book’s introduction millions of business meetings, hairdresser appointments, restaurant reservations, sales presentations, and student tutorials are missed every year. On a micro level one missed restaurant booking doesn’t seem like that big a deal—small potatoes even! But the theme of this book is how small things can make for big differences, and when it comes to missed appointments the costs can add up to staggering sums of money. Recall in our introduction how health economists in the UK have estimated that the overall cost of people failing to show for health appointments is £800 million (that’s over a billion US dollars) every year. That’s money being poured down the drain simply because individuals fail to live up to their commitments.

Also in the introduction we suggested that there are ways of persuading people to keep their appointments, and more generally to live up to their commitments, simply by making a couple of small, costless changes in approach that can lead to some pretty dramatic improvements.

One of the fundamental principles of social influence involves the relationship between commitment and consistency. This principle describes a deeply held motivation that most of us have to behave consistently with the previous commitments we have made, especially those commitments that are active, require effort on our part, and that are made public to others.

To give an example, researchers posing as visitors to a beach would place a beach towel and a radio on the sand in close view of a sunbather before heading down to the shore to take a dip in the sea. In one condition, one of the researchers would ask the sunbather (who was really the subject of the study) to watch the radio. Most agreed and verbally signaled their commitment with a friendly, “Of course I will.” In a second condition the researcher simply went for a swim without making any kind of request of the sunbather. Then the real experiment began. Another researcher, posing as an opportunistic thief, would run past, snatching up the radio and making off with it. The small act of asking for a verbal commitment made a big difference as to whether sunbathers who witnessed the fake theft gave chase. Only 4 out of 20 of those who weren’t asked to make a verbal commitment made any attempt to right the wrong. Contrast that with the 19 out of 20 sunbathers who were asked to watch the radio and who, consequently, leapt into action. Why? Because they had verbally agreed to a commitment, and giving chase was entirely consistent with that previous verbal commitment.

If a small change such as asking for a verbal commitment could be employed to such impressive effect to reduce theft at the beach, one wonders whether a similar strategy could be used to reduce appointment no-shows at the medical center.

In an attempt to answer this question, we conducted a series of experiments in three busy doctors’ offices where patients, immediately after being provided with a date and time in a standard appointment-making call, were asked to read back out loud those appointment details before hanging up the phone. This small change proved to have a modest effect when we measured the impact on subsequent no-show rates, reducing them by just over 3 percent. At first glance this doesn’t appear to be that big a difference until one considers two important factors. First, the strategy was costless to implement, adding at most a second or two to the interaction. Second, even though the 3 percent reduction appears to be relatively small, in terms of scale it is actually quite large. A 3 percent reduction such as this applied to a $1 billion problem would save $30 million.

The implication is clear. It is all too easy in our busy lives to cut short one interaction or conversation so that we can then focus our attention on the next. To do so without seeking some sort of verbal commitment of what has been agreed is an opportunity wasted, even if that opportunity is likely to spawn seemingly modest results. For example, a manager might garner greater commitment to solid actions from a team meeting if the individual members vocalized them at the end of the meeting. A parent might reduce those stressful bedtime negotiations by seeking a verbal agreement before agreeing to just one more game or story or TV program.

It turns out that sometimes these verbal commitments don’t have to be fully explicit either. For example a business development manager hoping to persuade a prospect to attend a meeting to hear an industry speaker could increase the chances that he or she will attend by asking them to submit a question for the Q&A session. Eliciting a question in advance from a prospect can act as a small commitment that potentially increases the likelihood that they will subsequently attend the event.

These are all examples of how requesting a simple verbal commitment could be a costless
SMALL
BIG that improves your chances for effective influence. But might there be an even better way to secure future commitments from others? It turns out that there is, and to understand what it is we need to return to the doctor’s office.

One common strategy that we noticed all the health centers in our study utilizing was to provide patients with an appointment card with the time and date of their next appointment. Usually, the appointment details were written out by a healthcare receptionist. We wondered whether this approach was unwise, given that the principle of consistency states that people are most motivated to be consistent with those commitments that they actively make themselves.

Accordingly, we tested the impact of another small change—one that served to actively, rather than passively, involve the patient in the appointment-making process. What was this small change? It was for the receptionist to simply ask the patient to write down the time and date of the next appointment on the card
themselves.
When we tested this approach over a four-month period, we measured a significant, 18 percent reduction in no-shows in that group. A
SMALL
BIG that, if scaled up properly, could now result in savings not of $30 million, but of $180 million. All done at a cost of, well, zero.

This additional insight from our doctors’ studies shines a spotlight on another important but undernoticed trap that we often fall into in the course of modern-day interactions and meetings: How easy it is to default to doing things ourselves in the knowledge that at least they will get done. As a result, a salesperson leaving a meeting might find that she has many subsequent actions to undertake, yet her customer has relatively few or even none at all. In such a context it is likely that the salesperson will be much more committed than the customer to the sales process itself. A personal trainer might believe that writing up his client’s tailored exercise program demonstrates how attentive, focused, and service-oriented he is, but maybe misses the point that the client is potentially less committed to the program.

But what about instances when it is unrealistic to expect a potential client or customer to make active and written commitments? Or how about those meetings where multiple people attend, and it would be unwise to share actions across the group, or unfair to nominate one person to take total responsibility? In situations like these it is probably better to write up all the actions and then circulate them yourself, ensuring that you make a small but crucial addition to the top of your email. Asking recipients to signal by way of a simple “yes” response that the notes you have sent are an accurate reflection of
their
understanding of next steps is a good start.

But sometimes, no matter how hard we try, our persuasion attempts can fall short. In such situations, what other small changes, linked to the commitment and consistency principle, might we employ?