There are 4 ways to change people’s behaviour: The first is the stick: Beat people until they do what you want. The stick works, but people hate being controlled, they will rebel — sooner or later. Repression is not a great strategy. The second is the carrot: Provide an incentive. Incentives work beautifully, until you remove […]
World Class Rhetoric
The other day I was sent a report. It went a little like this… (The names have been changed to protect the guilty) World Class Performance It has been implied that our performance could be improved. All available data suggests that this cannot be the case Market Context We have the highest satisfaction […]
“Group Think” is no Laughing Matter
In the 1970’s the psychologist Irving Janis coined the term “group think” to explain why group pressure results in poor decisions, or, as he explained it, why groups show: A deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement That is a little more erudite than the way I would put it, but the phrase […]