Is the Stick Mightier Than the Carrot? Psychologists will tell you that carrots are a far more productive strategy than sticks. You might think this is a blindingly obvious statement, but the facts don’t always support it. Sometimes the psychologists are proven wrong, often by a case of “regression to the mean”. That is exactly […]
What Can Your Mother Teach You About Incentives?
In 2003 the economist Anton Suvorov developed the “principal agent theory”. He investigated the way agents (think employees or children) react to the interventions of principals (think bosses or parents). He looked at the way rewards and bonuses act. All very clever and insightful stuff. I was discussing it with my mother. She smiled at […]
Call Centre Forecasts: Don’t Waste Your Time
Every call centre has them; bad days. Call volumes are higher than expected and staff don’t show up. The result is a mile long queue of frustrated customers; a group of deeply fed up agents and a set of supervisors running around futilely trying to “manage” the situation. A bad day. The post-mortem If the […]
Is Self Belief Self Fulfilling?
Psychological Claptrap They say self belief is a powerful thing, it can drive you forward or hold you back, it is the proverbial double-edged sword. What you believe to be true easily becomes so. Are they making rational statements or is it just a load of old hocus pocus? Let me tell you a story… […]
Saying Yes When the Computer Says No
It’s a poor joke… The computer says “No”. It wouldn’t be funny if it wasn’t true. But the computer does say “No” with alarming regularity. Well not the computer, but the bloke who programmed the computer. The same bloke who created all the policies, rules and red tape. The demoralising computer The computer is demoralising, […]
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