How to make someone else change, right now.
Have you ever tried to go on a diet? Loose weight? Exercise more? Making changes in our lives can be hard.
Changing other people’s behaviour? That’s even harder.
And yet that’s what we are trying to do with our products, services, brands, parenting, relationships, companies and tech. It’s what I’m trying to do on the daily as an AE for a tech startup. We are asking others to change what they do—often on an ongoing basis—and adopt what we want them to do.
When we think about behaviour change, the standard approach is to tell people what to do.
They mustn’t know what’s best for them, or they would do it, right?
We think they probably don’t know any better, so we give them information.
But if you look at the history of humankind, information is rarely the key to any behavioural change or movement.
For example, texting and driving. We know the risks, but how many people still text, message, email, OR do something on their phone while driving?
People know not to do it, and it’s still happening.
“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”― Derek Sivers
The problem is we think the main barrier to behaviour change or getting someone to do what we want is knowledge. This is part of the rational approach to change. But as human beings, we are not rational: people rarely behave rationally or make the ‘right’ choice.
The pain of acting now often overshadows delayed benefits. This is why we overeat, undersave, text and drive, and overspend.
When we make choices that affect our present when emotions are strong — I really want to eat this chocolate right now — and we make choices that satisfy us in the moment at the cost of our overall interests.
So what can we do to (ethically) make others do what we want?
We can provide alternative pathways and motivations to make it more likely that they will act in a particular way, even if it doesn’t seem logically linked.
We can make any unwanted behaviour harder to do.
We can make any unwanted behaviour more expensive.
We can reduce friction to taking action by taking out any barriers immediately.
We can use social proof and weapons of influence.
And we need to make the future bolder, brighter and seem sooner than we think — using as many emotions and senses as possible to make it visceral and real.
