Dan Erwin

A Gorgeous Black Voice

Some experiences have to be shared. And my best, most intimate friend is always ready to respond. After sixty years of friendship, the affection, emotions and intimacy were inevitable for John and me. He's always been a close friend. Here's how it surfaced. 

I was on my phone, holding for a technician to help me resolve a computer problem. Expecting silence, I got the glories of Saint-Saens from Samson and Delilah.The song went on with the rich, emotionally dark sounds of “my heart at the sound of your voice,” with even the harp and a wailing clarinet or oboe in the distance. And then the half-falsetto of the tenor’s response.  Entranced I hoped the technician wouldn’t come on too soon. I wanted to hear the end of the aria.

So, it finished. Then the technician came on, “how may I help you sir?” I was stopped in my tracks by her voice.

We interacted for probably thirty seconds, then I interrupted. “You have an absolutely gorgeous Black voice,” I said. I could hear her smiling over the phone as she said, “Why, thank you sir.” Without waiting, I asked that she send kudos to the choice of music. “I’d never heard Saint-Saens while waiting for a technician.”

Then she went on with her questions and directions. In the middle of it, she stopped and without any context, she asked, “how did you know?” “I used to be a singer,” I said. “And I first heard Leontyne Price in the early 1960’s. I’d never heard such gorgeous sounds. I learned that only Blacks can make that sound. And that it is present in their linguistic placement of sound.” To my surprise and delight, she confessed, “I wanted to do opera, but I wasn’t good enough.” She was oozing with warmth and intelligence. You could recognize it in the vocabulary she chose, the arrangement of her words, the way she framed her questions and answered with unusual clarity, quite capably moving the conversation along to achieve both our objectives. And so, she fixed my computer problems, then taught me how to do it for myself—and wished me the very best.

I leaned back—to a flood of emotions. I remembered sitting with my beloved wife in concert—now gone more than a dozen years. She squeezed my wrist, turned briefly to me with a slight smile and glistening tears, for the first time hearing the inescapability of desire from Delilah.

As is often the case, I needed to share my experiences. So, I called my old friend and classmate, a psychologist, in the early stages of dementia. Well aware that we could talk freely and that just our conversation—any conversation about most anything--would make his day—and mine.

“How did you know?” he asked. “I would never recognize a speaking sound that clearly.” “There was,” I responded, “a rounded, warm, empathic sound, built into her voice--not sharp or edgy. It’s a very distinguishing placement of sound. You can never hear it in another race. And of course, it’s not true of all Black females, but there it was in her voice. Many tenors,” I continued, “often come from Spanish, Italian or Latin background. It’s their bright and shining sound, the linguistics demanded by the original language resulting in a unique timbre. Say, Pavarotti, Domingo or Carreras. If you listen closely to Frank Sinatra, you can also hear it in his records. It really shows up in his falsetto.” So, my dear friend added, “You gave her a gift she will never forget. Perhaps the best gift.”

[For fun, track down “Nessun Dorma” on Youtube, with Jose Carreras (Spaniard) and Jonas Hoffman (German) and the different linguistic placements become clear—even to the untrained ear. Both create gorgeous sound. The Spaniard bright and shining. The German rich and full. [Take your pick.]

And then my friend was off, reminding me of an experience we had had a few days before our seminary graduation in 1962. We had gone out for lunch. A very attractive waitress had taken our order and was walking back to another client with glasses of wine on her tray. He was eyeing her. “You can’t have that,” I said. He broke up in laughter, but I reminded him he was going to be teaching in a church school. A couple more sentences, and he thought that I was referring to the woman, but I was referring to drinking wine in his new church college position. It still brings a laugh to both of us. Today, we both enjoy a good glass of wine or a taste of bourbon together on a rare occasion. And today, I reminded him that we were listening to the Adagietto of the Mahler Fifth on the way to that restaurant. “I would never have remembered that,” he responded. “God, those were wonderful memories.”

Poking Holes (Constructively) in the Martin-Zimmerman Hullaballoo

One of the most difficult conversational issues is to keep significant disagreement from curdling into bitter politics. But using the right tools, it can be done in both politics and business. Take, for example, the Martin-Zimmerman case.

By this point in time, most Americans know the facts in the case. A teenager, Trayvon Martin, was pursued and killed. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was acquitted by the six member all female jury, on his claim of self-defense.

By now, also, most Americans have heard opinions on both sides of the continuum. Al Sharpton has claimed that the acquittal of George Zimmerman is an “atrocity” and one of the worst situations that he has seen.

On the other side, Ann Coulter has compared the coverage of the case to the KKK. Affirming the verdict, she also said that Democrats have "never bought into the criminal justice system" and that it was a "cop out" for activists to call for a trial.

Dan Erwin's Three Best Columns from the Past Weekend

Rachel Donaldio at the New York Times on "When Italians Chat, Hands and Fingers do the talking." If you have trouble reading nonverbals, the Italians are great at gestures. I'm not talking obscene gestures, but they can do those too. It's a fine art in Rome. They can talk animatedly on their cellphones or smoking cigarettes, and gesticulate with "enviably elegant coordination." Some gestures are simple, like the side of the hand against the belly signifying hungry, or asking when the next bus will arrive which gives you the familiar shrug of the shoulders which means, "Only God knows." If you live in the Upper Midwest where gestures barely exist other than the extended middle finger which means the same universally, the Italians have news for you. Gestures have a history--and so does lack of gestures. That's actually quite useful info. The times article has a number of pictures for the curious. But if you feel like a novice, a great place to begin is with my blog, Listening to nonverbals. You'll find a number of relevant blogs by using the custom google on my site and searching "nonverbal."

Jeffrey Kluger in Time Magazine on "The Happiness of Pursuit." The opening line is catchy: "If you're an American and you're not having fun, it just might be your own fault." What follows is a cultural, psychological, philosophical, religious, neuroscientific and popular analysis of authentic happiness. Whewww!

I Was Bullied, I Think

 

I’ve sat on the sidelines reading blogs and articles on bullying for several months. There’s been a lot written about the subject, yet, I really didn’t know how to respond. Still, by some definitions, I was bullied as a kid. At the same time I’m unable to identify with what are defined as bullying consequences. I can’t possibly think of myself as a victim or scarred. So I was actually delighted to see that the opinion pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune did its readers a great service with the posting of two opposing perspectives on March 18.**

The Strange Rejection of Career Competencies

Rejection may be too strong, perhaps rebuff. But it is weird how little, with the exception of the Harvard Business Review and Wharton folk, is blogged about the fundamental competencies of career success. Could it be ignorance? Or just needed insight on how to succeed in business? Or even that business people have got their basic competencies down pat?

To read most human resource blogs, you’d think that the key to personal success is somehow found inside the billion dollar works of the Mark Zuckerbergs, Sheryl Sandbergs, Sergey Brins and Steve Jobs of the world. Although those folk and their ilk represent great media successes, they are, in fact, highly unrepresentative of more than 98% of the successful business population.

. . . . Where is US economic dynamism?

We Are What We Quote

Sunday's NYT opinion article of the above title and written by Geoffrey O'Brien brought a huge guffaw. A couple years ago I wrote an analogous post entitled, You are what you blog. But O'Brien's spin on the issue is exceptionally wise. Why? Because specific statements in aphorism form, especially in business and personal life, certainly about business relations, are nearly literal quotes from others.But research in anthropology and rhetoric finds that our use of these quotes is indicative of our internal life. 

It's quite easy to figure out what's going on with most bloggers, for example, when we pick up on the fact that they seem to be quoting the same people or the same ideas regularly. Business, for example, used to quote Peter Drucker or Jack Welch. But now, along with Jeff Pfeffer and Bob Sutton, business bloggers regularly quote internet marketers, big data and iCloud gurus, Seth Godin and occasionally Malcolm Gladwell. Steve Jobs is worshipped. Tom Peters is passe. Krugman, Brooks, DeLong and Friedman still get plenty of attention, even though David Leonhardt is sometimes more substantial or immediately pragmatic and useful.

What's quoting all about? 
Central quotes have a lot of practical applications. You can use them in after dinner speeches, writing blogs, and they may even serve as a model for a post or book that we're writing,

But as O'Brien writes, at a deeper level a person's embedded quotes are a response to a much deeper and even more profound human compulsion. As noted above, rhetoric and anthropology support that conclusion. In short, we do not select or use quotes willy-nilly. We choose them because they resonate with us.

A quoting parable
But, significantly, understanding how a quote works for a person can be a highly revealing aspect of that person's personality, motivations and values. As a consequence, quotes provide a way to understand, inform and even manage another person more successfully.

To get at what's actually under a single quote, here's a family of origin example that's brought laughter to our family for years, yet 14 years later is terrifically revealing. When my precocious grandson, Evan, was a little past three years of age and at our summer lake place, he sat one noon on the carpeted floor in the great room, looking at the stones they'd picked up that morning. His uncle, a geologist was naming them and explaining their background, and Evan was completely infatuated. His swim trunks were wet through and soaking the carpeting. His mother called down to him, "Evan, take off your wet shorts and toss them up to me." He turned momentarily, looked at her with that hilarious, somewhat disgusted look that only three or four year-olds can muster, and responded, "I've been thinking about that," and went right back to examining his rocks and getting a geology course. The quote had obviously been internalized.

His grandmother and I dissolved in a pool of laughter. I looked at my daughter and asked where that came from. "It's an exact quote from his father," she responded. It told us an awful lot about that little twerp.

Quote analysis
There are a number of ways to look at this quote. Underneath every quote are any number of stories. Stories, of course, create our world, our perspective and ultimately our behaviors. They can be liberating or enslaving. And, they define us. 

This is a classic comic quote. I don't merely refer to the fact that it's funny, ha ha, and we laughed long and hard. Technically, all comedy is a statement about a person's ability to succeed in life through his own wit, strength and wisdom. Harry Truman's, "The buck stops here," is identical in form to my grandson's quote. A more weakened version is the often-used, "I accept full responsibility." 

Our response
In some families, the kid would have been paddled for such a statement. But he was--and is--the way he was because our family encourages independence of thinking and action, taking charge of one's life, finding the things that interest us, learning in every setting. What some view as meddling, irresponsible or presumptious behaviors, we tend to view as leadership. Thus, my grandson remains self-confident, open to newness and learning--behaviors that were obvious in that quote from the three-year-old. 

Organizational quotes
When Harvey Golub was at American Express Financial Planners in Minneapolis, the ether was filled with quotes about and from Harvey. "The King (Harvey) said. . . ,"  or, "Harvey will figure it out." But they were not limiting quotes. Most of them gave wide parameters and lots of freedom to people, resulting in a highly successful organization, the most profitable in American Express' portfolio for a number of years. 

The quotes were inevitably comic or fairy tale. Fairy tale is the sense that someone will come in and rescue the situation. The John Wayne stories of the cavalry coming in to rescue the settlers from the marauding indians is classic fairy tale. Thus, if a problem at Amex was especially difficult, it might be pushed up the ranks to Harvey and his team with a Harvey fairy tale quote.

There's a lot more in quotes than meets the eye. They can be very telling.

Flickr photo: christa.mary

The Next Phase in Social Media: $$$$

Whoever thought Wall Street would be willing to pay for a Rolodex? And at $3,000 a shot? Though Andrew Ross Sorkin didn’t label the database of contacts (Relationship Science, LLC) the next phase in social media, its creators deserve kudos for their smarts.

What they’ve done is create an online Rolodex that is a lot more than a list of millionaires and billionaires. It shows the connections among the 1 percent: two million deal makers, power brokers and business executives. So it’s the connections and the subscriber’s unique ability to connect with connections that are the be-all, end-all, not the stand-alone list.

Looking closer at the online Rolodex, I wondered what different approaches might exist that the 99% might be willing to fork over some small change to purchase? After thinking a bit, I found the answer for $30 (see below).

Relationship Science LLC
But unlike Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media, Relationship Science doesn’t add user-generated content. It researches the web, lists the top 1% of deal-makers, power brokers and business execs, and adds in all the connections from the top 1%. In short, it compiles who knows whom, shows how the searcher is connected with, say a friend, friend of a friend, or charitable board, and then grades the quality of the connections with “strong,” “good,” or “poor.” Talk about status oriented—there are no phone numbers or emails. None of these people want to be cold-called, so unless you have a connection, you’re out of luck. But I’ll bet the finance people with the money to buy the service are sure to have a contact within the connections.

The online brand page reports the following for Relationship Science: COMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR CREATING, MANAGING, AND SEARCHING PROFILE INFORMATION.  The result is a highly valuable program that makes it possible for the Wall Streeter to insert his name into the connection list to find out who he already knows to lead him to relevant potential clients. It’s a godsend for Wall Street.

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
My own experience is that industry folk have all kinds of connections, many--or most of whom they are unaware. Several years ago when I started working on networking, I played the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for myself over a period of two weeks. When I got to several thousand connections, I quit. I could guess the quality of the connection, but had no algorithm. I’m a free-lancer, but many of my 300 plus (at that time in the early ‘nineties) managers and executives were well-placed throughout the nation. And I had a lot of really superb connections that have paid off through the years since.

$3,000 or $30
However, you don’t have to put out $3,000 to create your own highly relevant connected rolodex. Besides, unless you’ve got business for the big boys, that specific software won’t be of value to you. If you’re willing to shell out $30 for Wayne Baker’s Achieving Success Through Social Capital, you’ll find how to build, evaluate and use your own network of relationships, connections and/or potential clients. Baker has laid it out in an easy format that you can put on Excel or PowerPoint.

The key lesson here is simple: if you want to grow your business (personal or otherwise), build and use a connected network. And, as the research reveals in spades, it’ll need, eventually, to be face-to-face, not merely Facebook, LinkedIn or etc. 

Flickr photo: AndreAlmond

What's Good About Bad Bosses?

One of the ironies of work relationships is that we tend to gain more in-depth lessons from bad bosses than good ones. The endless list of bad bosses includes the following: assholes, control freaks, time wasters, poor communicators and etc. At one time or other nearly all of us have to deal with a bad boss. And most of us spend time trying to avoid them, rather than learn from them. Recently, however, I was reminded by Adam Phillips, a smart Freudian psychoanalyst, of the fact that bad bosses offer a significant good:

People become real to us by frustrating us. If they don’t frustrate us they are merely figures of fantasy.

That’s not to say that we don’t learn from good bosses. We all love to work for a boss who’s excellent at managing senior execs and resources, keeping his organization’s objectives and strategy in focus and who gives guidance to the team, both as a group and one-on-one. A boss of that sort is of inestimable value.  I’ve learned plenty from such bosses.

Candidly, however, I learned the most from a poor boss. He was the nicest guy, everybody’s friend and always effusive with praise. . . the very epitome of likability. I read all the classic traits of likability into his person: friendliness, warmth, helpfulness, sincerity, trustworthiness and, of course, morality. But after a long period of time, his likability began to wear thin. And that’s where the real learning began to show its messy face.

"Nice, but incompetent"
The particular form of bad boss I faced was the “nice, but incompetent, guy.” Systematic research excuses my difficulty and reveals that warmth (or likability) dominates our insights early on. Indeed, likability even disguises a person’s lack of intelligence, skill, creativity and efficiency—the very definition of competency. And, initially, I was seduced.

The research 
The research shows that warmth or “nice-guyness” carries a lot more weight. That makes sense to an evolutionary psychologist because another person's intent for good or bad is a lot more important to survival than whether or not a person has the smarts to act on his intentions. Not only do we make nice-guy judgments about someone first, we also make those judgments very rapidly. Furthermore, those judgments do not readily disintegrate. We tend to hold them tightly, blinding us to damaging incompetence.

According to Wharton’s Michael Useem, the research on incompetent bosses is deadly. It shows that bad bosses sap motivation, kill productivity, and can make you want to run from the job screaming. And, yeah, that was my experience.

Certainly my boss wasn’t a demeaning asshole. But if I’d understood earlier on that, in spite of his friendliness, he was significantly incompetent, I’d have treated him far differently. Recognizing the political implications of his power, I’d have been less transparent.  I would have spent time educating him on a few issues and learned to be very discreet on others. I would also have built an even stronger network outside his range.

But my understanding of managerial incompetence, disguised by likability grew by leaps and bounds. Like anyone else, I like nice guys. But now, I very quickly look beyond their friendliness to their competence. Distinguishing between likability and competence is exceptionally clarifying. It helps us make more effective decisions regarding our relationship and our career. And it also saves us a lot of time.

Flickr photo: gunnisal

Collective Intelligence, or . . . Collective Stupidity?

Collective intelligence has been around for a long time--and in many different forms. For example, people from all over the world collectively created Wikipedia and Linux, high quality intellectual products.

But what makes for the best, the most trusted collective intelligence? Is it a lot of smart people, or perhaps more creative folk? It’s a highly significant question, because it speaks to the formation of teams and groups for gaining the most business impact.

In a fascinating article, Thomas Malone, Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, answers that question. And his answer is more than a little surprising. Initially, the Center staff looked at individual smarts, then things like the psychological safety of the group, the personality of the group members and other typically relevant factors. Malone said that most of the things that they thought might affect performance turned out not to have any significant effect. But they found that there were three factors that were “significantly correlated with the collective intelligence of the group.”

• Social perceptiveness of the group members. Typically, social perceptiveness refers to an awareness of others behaviors and an understanding of why they act the way they’re acting. Social perceptiveness is a form of interpersonal intelligence, a.k.a. emotional intelligence. The more socially perceptive are not only aware and understanding, but they also know how to deal with negative responses and how to leverage positive actions of others. Malone’s team measured social perceptiveness through the use of a test, the “Reading the Mind and the Eyes Test,” that was developed essentially to measure autism. People who are good at that work well in groups. When you have a group with a bunch of people like that, the group as a whole is more intelligent.

• Evenness of conversational turn taking. Turn-taking is rarely talked about directly in business settings unless there’s an experienced facilitator available. Turn-taking is often thought of as even or nearly equal “air-time” for each member in a team meeting. But more than being a quantitative issue, it’s also a qualitative issue. In the best situations, turn-taking implies substantive contributions from each member of the group. Malone’s research found that evenness of conversational turn-taking correlated with more intelligent groups and group decision making. And, conversely, groups where one person dominated the conversation were, on average, less intelligent than groups with evenly distributed turn-taking.

• Percentage of women in the group. Malone writes that the most surprising correlation was that the more women in the group, the more intelligent the group. This last result is not just a diversity result. It’s not just saying that you need groups with some men and some women. It looks like that it’s a more or less linear trend. That is, more women are better all the way up to all women. It’s well-known that on average women are more socially perceptive than men. Obviously, this research adds still more to that research: put together a team of experts, including a significant percentage of women and you’ll get more and better collective intelligence.

This is not to say any woman—or man—off the street impacts team intelligence. This assumes that the people you put in a group have some expertise in the area related to the needed decisions. As Malone indicated, he defines group intelligence the same way individual intelligence is defined: somebody who’s good at a lot of mental things, somebody who is good at learning quickly, at adapting to new situations, at doing a bunch of things. One thing is for certain: this information ought to make managers and leaders think seriously about more women in business, and think still more seriously about the formation of teams and groups for strategic business matters.

Flickr photo: prsinc333

Why Should You Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Closer?

It wasn’t the Godfather’s Michael Corleone who first uttered this well-known dictum. Actually, it came from Machiavelli in "The Prince," the definitive primer for how to be a dictator. You’d think that with my easy-going optimism, I’d never write a blog on this subject.  But, au contraire!

As a manager or leader it is inevitable that we’ll want to add to our knowledge base, try to sell ideas, get people on board and even change the direction of our organization. One of the involved persons just might be your enemy. That’s my basic rationale for acting on Machiavelli’s instinct.

In the business setting, I refer to “enemy” as a person you have to interact with, someone who’s competing for your resources, who doesn’t follow through on his commitments, whom you don’t trust, with whom the “chemistry” isn’t there, or who disagrees with your perspective from the ground up. These are also people whom you’ll need in order to get your own personal and organizational objectives met. As both a manager and a consultant, I’ve found a number of people who fit in that same box. In short, I’ve found Machiavelli very useful for my own success.

But there are a number of exceedingly important reasons for keeping your enemies close:

1.    You can learn a lot from people you dislike. Indeed, my best learning doesn’t always come from friends. Often it’s from opponents, adversaries or fence-sitters. They bring a different worldview, perspective and/or ideas on a subject of common interest. There are plenty of times when such a person can help to better my thinking and position on an issue.

2.    You have to keep your enemies close to understand their perspective and interests. One of the persuasion strategies I learned from Bill Howell years ago was the importance of creating a highly representative “panel” of usually about six people who would represent the diversity of commitments or opinions on an issue. If I could frame my proposal in such a way to satisfy the self-interests of each of those six, I was well on the way toward success. That demand, of course, meant that each person had to be close enough to me to be well understood. Truthfully, I usually understood my enemies better than my friends.

3.    When your enemies are close, it’s easier for your allies to work with you. Allies are often the least helpful in analyzing your ideas. Furthermore, your allies may have just as much difficulty with your enemy as you, and that’s part of the reason you’re friends. But your allies will respect you and find it easier to work with you if they know you really understand the lay of the land--and how to appeal to your enemy’s self-interest.

[See also my latest, how to keep your enemies closer.]

Determining the motives of your enemy involves a significant amount of guesswork. One of the best ways to get to know that person is to listen to how he goes about persuading others. People want the world to be congruous with their expectations and in line with their predictions. So when they attempt to persuade others, they use tactics that would be persuasive to them. Observe them, listen to them and analyze what they say and how they say it. From that you can often figure out their interests and their values.

Finally, it needs to be said that you can’t keep your enemy close to you unless you know how to disagree agreeably, understand and share at least some of your enemy’s interests or values, are sometimes transparent with your differences and are willing to interact with that person in a social situation. In such settings it’s important to find out what that person wants that you can give them. Secondly, it’s just as important to figure out the resources you have to offer them in order that they’ll give you what you want. Don’t forget that some of the resources each of us has are information and contacts.

In sum, if you dig deep enough, there are always a few interests and values you share with your enemies. Most of us like to talk about our differences, but in reality we are all far more alike than different. Inherently also, that means that you know how to really converse. But this also implies that you can listen and observe as though that person is the only other person on the planet. Machiavelli is front lobe stuff: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Flickr photo: unriobravo

How to Use Obama's Academic 'Dream Team' for Organizational Results

Benedict Carey, science editor of the NYTimes, recently revealed Obama’s leading-edge use of social scientists to win the election. In contrast to Republicans, who relied largely on the insights of their pundits, Obama’s success is tied to the work of nerdy professors. You can be very certain that both political parties will be using nerdy profs for the next election. After reviewing the research by Obama’s team, I saw that the lessons are not exclusive to politics: they are also immediately applicable to every business culture.

The group of social scientists from UCLA, Harvard, Princeton, UCSD and Arizona State, which calls itself the “consortium of behavioral scientists,” or COBS, showed how to use "little things" to win.

1.      Princeton’s Susan Fiske’s research has shown that when deciding on a candidate, people generally focus on both competence and warmth. “You can’t just run on the idea that everyone wants to have a beer with you. Some people care a lot about competence.” Romney was recognized as a competent businessman, but was often portrayed as distant and unable to relate to the needs of ordinary people.

In business, it’s more and more important to hire someone who’s both competent and likably warm. Stanford’s Bob Sutton has written about the “asshole theory,” managers who’re competent but not at all likable. They’re destructive to both the organization and their people. Company recruiters need to look not only for the necessary competence, but also for warmth in their candidates. Finding candidates with both those characteristics will inevitably improve organizational success. It’s competence that gets the task done, and warmth that gets the people’s support.

     2.      When it comes to rumors, the best strategy is not to deny the charge (“I am not a flip-flopper”), but to “affirm a competing notion.” Rather than deny that Obama was a Muslim, they constantly affirmed that he was a Christian.

Managers often find that the rumor mill is at work, resulting in employees checking out various conclusions. For example, “I’ve heard that a layoff is in the works.” A strategic response might be, “As you know, we’re facing a difficult economy. We’re currently looking at the best strategies for resolving our financial problem and maintaining effective client relationships.”

     3.      Identifying a person as a voter--“Mr. Jones, we know you have voted in the past”–acts as a subtle prompt for future voting. The persuasion specialist, Robert Cialdini, pointed out that “People want to be congruent with what they have committed to in the past, especially if that commitment is public.”

On many business occasions, you’ll need the support of organizational members to achieve your objective. That might sound something like this, “Joe, last year when we tried to get this project through the management team, you supported the objective and worked very hard, but it failed. Now that we’ve reframed the issue but are still focused on last year’s objective, we’d like to be able to count on your support.”

    4.    Making even a simple plan to vote, including specifying a time.  Dr. Susan Fiske of Princeton said that she received a generic, mass market e-mail from the Obama campaign before the election. It said, ‘People do things when they make plans to do them; what’s your plan?’ Recent research shows that this kind of message is much more likely to prompt people to vote than literature.

Business project objectives should usually result in action plans. Thus, as team leader, you say to Jan, “Jan, you’re on board with this objective. Would you lay out a couple steps and a specific timeline for this phase of the project?”

    5.      Informing supporters that others in their neighborhood were planning to vote. This activity trades on the human instinct to conform. In one piece of research, testing different messages to reuse hotel towels, the message ‘the majority of guests in this room reuse their towels’ resulted in a 41% increase.

Many organizations have found success with complex projects by using clearly defined protocols and processes for working between the relevant groups. So the manager might say to a new employee, “Gina, historically projects like this one that’s complex and spread across several different organizations only succeed when there is a clearly defined mechanism for handling information and tasks between the organizations.”

The success of the Obama strategy is an announcement of significance. It informs us that by better understanding how social reality—the organizational culture—works, a person or an organization’s objectives can more effectively be met, even with “little things.”

Flickr photo: rolandin