Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. report 4

            In the next two chapters of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, the authors explain two more aspects to making your ideas stickier. These two aspects are emotion and stories. Adding these two things two the rest of the book can help your ideas to stick.

            The authors go to explain what the word “emotion” means in the context of making one’s ideas more likely to stick: it means getting people to care for your idea or cause. The authors use a test done on several people to elaborate their message. The test subjects were separated into two groups and were given an irrelevant test and for their participation they were given five dollars in one dollar bills. Before they were able to leave they were given a brown envelope from a charity organization. Each group’s envelope was from the same charity but the way the message was delivered differed from the two groups. Group one’s message was presented with a lot of facts and statistics while the second group was given a picture of a little girl and an explanation how their money can help little children like her get food. The testers then averaged out each group’s own average of donations. Groups one’s average was $1.18 but group two’s average was $2.48. Once you get emotions involved in your message than your idea is more likely to stick and you’re more likely to get a better response from your audience. The authors then reference Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how this can help with getting people to care. He then uses an example to show how to use Maslow’s triangle to motivate or get people to care about something. A company wants to tell its employees that is offering a one thousand dollar bonus if they meet performance targets. In doing this the company hopes that this will increase worker productivity. There are three ways the company can present this; the first two involve spending that extra thousand dollars on some material object and saving it for future use. The third way is to tell its employees that this $1000 means that the company values you as an asset to the company and recognizes your job performance. Most people who answered this question picked the third way. By doing this a company positively affects the employee’s self-esteem which is higher on Maslow’s triangle than the physical reward promised in the first two ways.  But when asked the question in reverse; what do you think someone else would prefer to hear? Most people chose the first way. Many people feel that they are motivate by self-esteem while others are motivated by down payments. The third way invokes emotion into the employee while the other two are analytical and invoke little to no emotion (plus they are also pretty obvious) into the person which cause them to care less.

            The next aspect the authors talked about is using stories to get an idea to stick. The authors used examples to explain how stories surround a central idea that is easily sticks to the mind of the listener. In class we read an article about the nacirema people which talked about their strange culture with plenty of descriptive examples. Then after you read it you find out that this article is actually critiquing American culture (nacirema spelled backwards in American). The main idea of the article is that American culture is very strange once you take a step back from it and look at it from the outside.  The author covered his main idea in a story that stuck in the readers mind. This is a prime example that shows how an idea embedded in a story is a great way to transmit and idea.

            The authors show how these two stratagies can make people care about an idea and how to make an idea easy to listen to. Using emotion and stories and help make your ideas stick.

Magic Cable

After reading and discussing this article I came to the conclusion that Roberts is never satisfied. It seems he stays at a place for a little while than he finds something to complain about and if something grinds his gears he will try to argue with the upper staff once and if he does not succeed he moves on in hope of finding perfect job. It is understandable in his last job where his pay was essentially cut in half. He has the right to try and fight it but he yells at his boss then leaves.

We discussed what factors of motivation force him to change jobs and we figure out that his work never holds any satisfaction for him. The only reason he stays at these place is that he is never dissatisfied. If one factor changes for the worse he gets up and leaves.

Doctors

In class on Monday we discussed what motivates doctors to make the decision if a person is sick or not. Basically there are two types or errors the first error Is telling someone that they are well but in fact they are actually sick. Error two involves telling a well person that they are actually sick. In the world that the author describes doctors are more inclined to tell a person that they are sick because there is larger penalty if a doctor commits the first error. It's pretty easy to see the problem with this scenario.

One might think at first glance that the first error is worse so it deserves  a larger punishment and in most cases it might be proven right. But as we discussed in class error 2 can be just as devastating. A great example is diagnosing a person with cancer when they do not have it. The treatment for cancer is just as terrifying as actually getting cancer and many people with cancer will usually avoid the treatment and Dr. Goates example also proves that an error 2 can be just as bad as error 1.

A simple start to  fixing this problem is my making the penalties equal or coming up with a new system in which punishments are based on the damage to the patient.

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs

His theory is a good start to trying to figure out what motivates people but as we discussed in class this theory doesn't apply to everyone and there are very large exceptions to his theory like the parents giving all of their food to their kids instead of eating themselves. According to his theory eating is a primal need and must be satisfied, but the parents choose to ignore this and satisfy their loving and belonging needs. This one example goes against everything in his theory.

Education system

Last class we discussed the problems with rewarding teachers for their teaching. Doing this can cause more bad than good. Teachers can try to cheat the system by boosting their students grades by giving them easy tests and other things. There was already a study in Chicago that around 5% of the teachers "helped" their students improve their grades on the standardized tests.

We also learned in class that you can't motivate someone using just money because people are more complicated than that. Employers  need to find other means to motivate their workers other than throwing money at them. Doing this too much can often lead to a decrease in motivation and even lead to unethical behavior.

Truth is, money is important to everyone but people need more than that to be motivated.

Book Report 3: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

In these two sections of the Book “Made to Stick Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” The authors explained how and why to make an idea concrete and credible.

            The first aspect they talk about is concreteness. To make an idea stick one must not talk about the idea in the abstract and instead make a n idea solid and concrete, so the listener can picture it in his or her mind. The used several examples in the book to explain this aspect. One of them involved a fictional manufacturing company. There are engineers and manufactures working there. It is up to the engineers to make blueprints of the product and it is up to the manufactures to put it together. When there is a problem putting the product together (like if a bolt or screw does not fit properly with the engineers design), the manufactures complain to the engineers that there is something wrong with their design. In response the engineers would add more to the blueprint to show where this piece goes, but all of this scribbling is just nonsense to the manufactures. The manufactures just want the engineer to come down to the floor to physically show where it goes. As one can see the problem with the situation is that the engineers are thinking abstractly while the manufactures can only understand concreteness.  In a small group it is important to always speak in the concrete so no miscommunication occurs. One can also look at Walmart’s new uniform change to show this aspect of making an idea sticky. They want to tell everybody that they are no longer the lowest quality discount store and that now they are on the level of Target and other stores like Target. Walmart can say whatever it wants but that does not mean people are going to believe it. So Walmart is upgrading their uniforms to show everybody that their declaration is happening and you can see it.  These uniforms also emphasize their idea of offering friendly customer service. The idea itself is very abstract and simply stating that will mean almost nothing. These uniforms are the physical representation of that idea. The colors on the uniform look friendly (nice bright colors) and the new uniforms show the professionalism of the person wearing the uniform.

            The next aspect in making an idea sticky is credibility. The person conveying the idea must seem credible to the listeners to make an idea stick. Listeners are more apt to believe an idea if an expert or someone greatly affected by the idea tells them. One of the examples in the book show how a small team of researchers can be right but without credibility one’s idea will not stick. This group of interns working at a medical form discovered strange bacteria in stomach ulcers. They filed their discovery but no one believed them because they were nobodies. Feeling frustrated and angry the leader swallowed a whole jar of these bacteria. Soon after he did that his stomach soon became inflamed and red. He them took antibiotics and he better relatively quickly. A mare credible doctor saw these findings and with his credibility they were able to prove a direct link with stomach ulcers and this strange bacteria. In a small group it important to get credible sources so the small group’s information is believable.

            While presenting an idea it is important to make sure that one’s idea is concrete and that it comes from a credible source. Without these two things an idea will not stick.

Nacirema people

On Monday we discussed the article about the Nacirema people and their culture. While reading the article you think to yourself that this culture is very strange until you realize that Nacirema is American spelled backwards and this article is talking about our culture. By wording the articles in a way, he made american culture seem alien and strange. I admit i was fooled and did catch on that the article was about us until class on Monday. This article showed an outside perspective on american life and beliefs. The holy mouth men section really got me. It seemed strange the way the author described them and how Americans really put a value on clean teeth. It made me realize how much of an effort we put into keeping good hygiene.