Hey, Join My New Project!
I am going to challenge you.
I want to see you do things you’ve never done before. I want you to learn, experiment, fail beautifully, and then try again. And I want to see you make progress in areas that few people in the world have explored.
I am talking about my new project.
You are welcome to join.
Why are you checking your Facebook or Twitter streams multiple times per day? Is it because you were sent to a social media workshop by your manager? Or because these companies are smartly targeting your intrinsic motivators?
What has caused millions of people to start running, exercising, and monitoring their calorie intakes? Was there a government campaign promoting healthier lifestyles? Or is it because thousands of apps, smartphones and wearables have made it a lot more fun?
What convinced me to switch from taxis to ridesharing, from radio stations to streaming music, and from workstations to tablets and notebooks? Is it because it’s part of someone else’s change program? Or because I wanted a more convenient work-life?
I’m sure you get my point.
People don’t change because they’re told to change. People change because smart companies make them want to change. It usually involves techniques borrowed from gamification, behavioral economics, and habitualization.
Consider a fitness tracker, for example. I run three times per week because the metrics of the fitness tracker on my smartphone have gamified the exercises so that I’m competing against myself. By showing me statistics, and comparing those with others, the tracker uses “nudges” borrowed from behavioral economics to influence my behaviors further. And by reinforcing the good behaviors with various triggers and rewards, the app has turned my regular exercises into habits.
Games, nudges, and habits.
That’s how people change.
We now live in a time where manuals, workshops, promotion campaigns, and change programs are not sufficient anymore to achieve organizational change. To really understand and influence people, we can now use smartphones, wearables, big data, artificial intelligence, and a healthy dose of applied psychology and sociology.
Do you find that fascinating?
Let’s try and improve organizations in a more modern way.