Mental Models: Variable Reward

“RANDOM” REWARDS MAKE POWERFUL MOTIVATORS; THEY SEEM SCARCE AND UNPREDICTABLE (AND THEY’RE LESS LIKELY TO CONFLICT WITH INTRINSIC MOTIVATION.)

How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

When many people are gathered in a highly social context for a short period of time (such as a fundraiser or a swat team project), motivate people to contribute by rewarding randomly selected individuals within the larger group.

How might this apply to your business?

Rewards can be praise, virtual goods, redeemable points and so on—but without a predictable pattern.

Consider

Whether to encourage positive behaviors or to reward someone for simply registering for your product or service, what can you give out at random intervals?

See Also

Shaping, Sequencing, Delighters, Gifting, Periodic Events

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

Story Bias: Stories of Hope

Description

Stories of hope tell of what might be.They may speak of the hope for rescue from dire straits, of someone who will save the people and save the organization from the mess in which it finds itself now.

They may also project hope for positive success, of achieving visionary goals, of fat bonuses or of international acclaim.The hope in the story comes may come out in the wistful tone and expressions of desire more than determination. There is typically a sense of dependency on the leader or on external and uncontrollable forces.

Example

Barack Obama has been out of the White House for only a little more than a year. But it's not too soon for historians to begin to assess the impact of his momentous presidency. As President, Obama never let go of the idea of hope. That was what made him so endearing to millions of Americans and shaped much of what he did in the Oval Office. Obama had clearly articulated his understanding of the nation when he came into the spotlight during the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

In the middle of one of the most contentious moments of the era, when Americans were deeply divided over a President who had taken the nation into a costly war in Iraq based on false claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction, then-Illinois Sen. Obama refused to give in to anger and disillusionment. "Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. ... But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

Hope was and remains the main pillar of his branding.

Discussion

Whether the hoped-for end is achieved may well be seen as being out of the hands of the hopers and in the hands of fate. This puts the hoper in a child position, effectively seeking a parent to rescue them.Leaders can use hope stories to show themselves to be in harmony with the hopeful workforce, typically in times of change. The leader may then change the tone and show them the way forward.In organizations, hope stories may originate in Basic Assumption Groups as described by Wilfred Bion, where dependent followers seek a leader who will rescue them.

Story Bias: Founder Myths

Description

Stories are often told the people who started the company.These may include stories from before they founded the company, including formative tales from their childhood or former employers.

They may give an indication of the values of the founders and what they found important. They may also effectively model ways of behaving and thinking that others should follow.

Example

The man who built one of the largest restaurant franchises in the world is not named McDonald. Ray Kroc, who transformed a small burger joint into a global fast-food giant, is already a household name for many Big Mac fans, but The Founder tells the story behind the origins of McDonald’s and how Kroc rewrote history to call himself the founder of the company. Or, rather, it tells one version of the story.  Complete story here.

Similarities with Starbucks? Starbucks was founded in 1971 by three friends who met at the University of San Francisco, and the first location, in Seattle, only sold whole roasted coffee beans, not brewed coffee.  The company grew in popularity over the next several years, introducing brewed coffee and espresso, and by the time former employee Howard Schultz bought it in 1987 there were six locations.

Discussion

Founders have a unique position something akin to the parent who 'gives life' to a child. They thus stand in the parent or grandparent position and command particular respect. Understanding the personality of founders helps to understand the culture of the present company, much of which may still reflect the founding values and style.

Founders often help the process of understanding them by writing autobiographies, from which particular stories may be spread longer-term through the company.

Story Bias: Genesis Stories

Description
Genesis stories tell about beginnings, foundations and how things got started.

Organizations sometimes begin with the founders having clear intent. Other companies start with a clear purpose and vision.

Companies often go through stages in their growth and genesis and re-genesis may occur multiple times are they are ‘reborn’ in new forms. Genesis stories may thus appear about significant change.

Genesis stories may also be told about the start of a new division, setting up in new countries, developing new products and anything that gave a sense of ‘new’ and which directly led to greater things.

Example
You may know HP as one of the greats that started in a garage, but did you know that in 1938, Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett began part-time work in a rented garage with US$538 in working capital, consisting of cash and a used drill press? Drawing on Bill’s study of negative feedback, Bill and Dave produced HP’s first product, the resistance-capacitance audio oscillator, used to test sound equipment. They named it the HP Model 200A.

When a small company is acquired by a large company, genesis and re-genesis story are told about their origins and their new birth in the larger organization.

Discussion
Genesis stories give organizations a sense of history and belonging. They echo the importance that humans put on the date and place of their birth and the period of their early upbringing.

They also show founders as human explorers or heroic visionaries. The people involved in the genesis, including early employees, achieve the status of company elders through such stories.

Early employees are often informal company historians and feel it a duty to spread genesis and other stories.

Story Bias: Stories of fear

Description

Fearful stories talk about a person's concerns, worries, and fears. They may be direct and graphic or may be indirect and even make use of metaphor. Fearful stories are often told privately, as it is often not considered the right thing to do to expresses fear publicly, particularly where one might be considered weak and unworthy for having such negative emotions.

A widely held fear may also be expressed by leaders as a cathartic mechanism where others feel unable to make their fears known. A good way of doing this is to describe the fear and then assuage it in some way, for example by showing that things are not all that bad or that there is light on the other side of the hill.

Example

Did you hear about the reorganization that's coming up? What's going on with the merger? Does leadership really know what they are doing? What's going to happen to me?

Discussion

When we are anxious, this creates a tension in us that seeks some form or release. Stories provide a way of doing this as our imaginings project futures more terrible than might reasonably be expected.

Being a motivating force (albeit negative), fear may be turned to some use for example in Lewin's change method for unfreezing a person or organization.

Played well, organizational fear can become an effective leadership tool as the fear is sublimated into positive action. Done badly, however, it can have the reverse effect, paralyzing people or causing a contrary reaction.

Mental Models: Familiarity Bias

WE TEND TO DEVELOP A PREFERENCE A PREFERENCE FOR THINGS OR APPROACHES MERELY BECAUSE WE ARE FAMILIAR WITH THEM.

How might this apply to great teams and cultures?

This is familiar to almost everyone who has ever argued technology, politics or religion. We tend to accept only new information that supports our old ideas. This is just as likely -- and even more dangerous -- in the realm of analytics, where outcomes can influence decisions at the highest levels. The entire point of analytics as a strategic tool is to push beyond old ideas into more effective choices and policy: why poison the waters?

How we react to other people’s behavior would depend on the type of attributions we make, which depend on what data we collect and our relationship to that data. For instance, if we are predisposed to thinking a particular opportunity will not work in our organization, someone looking to work on that opportunity will not change our minds. Or, when faced with poor performance, such as missing a deadline, we are more likely to punish the person if an internal attribution is made (such as “the person being unreliable”). In the same situation, if we make an external attribution (such as “the timeline was unreasonable”), instead of punishing the person we might extend the deadline or assign more help to the person. If we feel that someone’s failure is due to external causes, we may feel empathy toward the person and even offer help (LePine & Van Dyne, 2001). On the other hand, if someone succeeds and we make an internal attribution (he worked hard), we are more likely to reward the person, whereas an external attribution (the project was easy) is less likely to yield rewards for the person in question. Therefore, understanding attributions is important to predicting subsequent behavior.

How might this apply to your business?

If introducing a radically new project, use characteristics of something already familiar to people. For example, use visual aspects similar to other popular services or the likeness of a familiar physical environment. You can establish formal partnerships with already familiar brands to help make your new idea seem safer.

Consider

What sense do you make of being on both sides of this issue? How will you mitigate that going forward?

See Also

Framing, Priming, Conceptual Metaphor, Status Quo Bias, Affect Heuristic

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

MENTAL MODELS: UNIFORM CONNECTEDNESS

ELEMENTS THAT ARE CONNECTED BY UNIFORM VISUAL PROPERTIES ARE PERCEIVED AS BEING MORE RELATED THAN ELEMENTS THAT ARE NOT CONNECTED.

How might this apply to your business?

Imagine a page on your site blurred just enough to be unreadable. What content areas are visually connected? Should they be? What items aren’t connected but should be? This is especially useful with form design,, spreadsheets and other areas where you have many discrete pieces of information that may or may not related to each other.

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

MENTAL MODELS: GIFTING

WE FEEL THE NEED TO RECIPROCATE WHEN WE RECEIVE A GIFT.

How might this apply to your business?
What can you give away? It could be a free account or an upgrade. Maybe a free report—for example, personal informatics are interesting. Perhaps a gift card. Make it something unexpected. And if other similar services are giving away the same thing, it’s not a gift—it’s expected.

See also: Delighters, Variable Rewards, Shaping, Sequencing, Triggers

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.

MENTAL MODELS: REPUTATION

WE CARE MORE DEEPLY ABOUT PERSONAL BEHAVIORS WHEN THEY AFFECT HOW PEERS OR THE PUBLIC PERCEIVE US.

How might this apply to your business?
Are actions tied back to a profile or an identifying piece of information? In online social contexts, sharing actions (or a subset of actions) with others helps encourage good conduct. People build reputation through things like sharing information, connecting people, and keeping a record of their personal activities. While identity is often site-specific, consider ways to use the external identities people have built.

See also: Status, Social Proof, Authority, Self-Expression, Loss-Aversion, Authority, Positive Mimicry, Autonomy

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services

MENTAL MODELS: LOSS-AVERSION

WE HATE LOSING OR LETTING GO OF WHAT WE HAVE (EVEN IF MORE COULD BE HAD).

How might this apply to your business?
What is lost by leaving your site? If sign up is your goal, let people play with your service (creating personal content they might want to save) before you ask for personal information. For ongoing accounts, offer things of perceived value that are lost by closing an account. Also, can you frame your value proposition to highlight what people already lose or miss out on by not using your service.

See also: Framing, Ownership Bias

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In the whirl of our day-to-day interactions, it’s all too easy to forget the nuances that distinguish great teams, great cultures, and great products/services.

Mental Model Flash Cards bring together insights from psychology into an easy reference and brainstorming tool. Each card describes one insight into human behavior and suggests ways to apply this to your teams as well as the design of your products and services.