#TekSavvy Fibre installed to replace Bell. I should celebrating, instead my WiFi performance is noticeably worse around the whole house. Ex my office used to get ping: 4ms, 600Mbps down and 500Mbs up. Now I get 8, 300 and 158. The Adorn 854v6 modem isn't delivering a fraction of what it should.
Make it reversible, when we make it possible for someone to back out of something we're increasing the #Trialability. The Agile community seems to have this one down pat. We tend to call it an experiment. We ask could we try this as an experiment for 4-6 weeks and gather data on the outcomes?
I call this the Malcolm Gladwell myth, since it his book the popularized and distorted already questionable research.
As usual, I'm not a psychologist. I don't have a PhD in any science. I do coach Agile and Scrum. I also explode the balloons I call NeuroMyths. As a general rule, if Gladwell writes about it, tread carefully.
In "Outliers", Gladwell suggests that completing 10,000 hrs in their chosen discipline will excel.
The original study was about deliberate practice with the intention of improving performance, with focus and feedback. Without deliberate intention and feedback, we might be experiencing the same HOUR over and over again, repeating the same mistakes.
10,000hrs was just a catchy number in the original paper by Anders Ericsson, it wasn't magically. If was an average then Gladwell missed that the group would be spread to either side of that number
The students in the study were already exceptionally good violinists. This was about going from exceptionally good to world class.
It was a narrow study, in a small area, not a good source for a generalist book
Others have shown since:
Deliberate practice works well in fields with stability where the rules don't change often: chess, classical music, tennis etc. In areas where the landscape is changing then deliberate practice
Reduce Upfront Costs, is one way to improve #Trialability. I found it interesting to learn, people value a savings of $5.99 with free shipping, over a $10 discount on the product itself. Free shipping resolved uncertainty, where a discount for even more money does not.
I guess I'm an odd duck, I look at the total cost of ownership
#UncertaintyTax when circumstances are uncertain our brains press pause. An experiment that Berger cites: students were offered a cheap vacation and placed in three groups: pass, fail and unknown. The pass and fail groups both wanted the vacation. The uncertain group didn't want the vacation as much. Yet eventually they will either be in the pass or fail group, so their interests should be the same. The Uncertainty caused them to press pause.
Everett Rogers - Diffusions of Innovation - one of the most cited science books ever. It's the source of Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, ...
In this book Everett, that up to 87% of the variance in adoption of an innovation (idea or product) comes from the trialability. Trialability is an odd, word. It just means if our ideas can't be easily tried. They will be ignored.
Next time you want an improvement at work make it sure it can be tried easily.
#UncertaintyTax#InfluenceAtWork - How much would you pay for $50 gift card at a local retailer that must used in two weeks. On average people were willing to pay $45. Now offer a lottery ticket with 50% chance of winning a $50 and 50% chance of winning $100 Gift card. We would expect the perceived value to go up or stay the same. In fact it dropped to $16.
To reduce the #UncertaintyTax at work, offer experiments and make bigger decisions reversible.
Bell Canada, how low can you go? Hours ago, I signed up to switch my Fibre internet service to TekSavvy. A few minutes go I got a call from Bell, offering to lower my rate. So apparently lower rates are only a good business practice when it hurts smaller players.
#InfluenceAtWork
It's not a top ten list and as you will see, I'm not yet David Letterman. I thought it would be fun to cover some of the many many reasons we fail to get what we want. (Cue the Stones?)
As you will see, smiling on camera is still a skill I'm learning.
Equal Weighting for answers - as above some things may matter very little to you as an individual, yet the answer will be used to place you in a category
Scales can't be used to compare with other people - two people might both score as 'D' Dominant, that doesn't mean they would have the same level of dominance.
There isn't a standard test
Originally designed in the early 1900's to assess the "Mental Energy" of army recruits
I'm not a psychologist. I don't have a PhD. I do explode the balloons I call #NeuroMyths. DISC (and its friend Myers-Briggs) are among the ones I have the most fun with.
#Influence at Work - Asking someone in leadership to take the perspective of the development team will be a challenge if that leader doesn't have prior development experience. We need to establish common ground on a relevant subject. We need to find a shared experience that that is relevant to our work. Example if the problem is frequent interruptions to our dev team, then find ask them about the effect of interruptions on their own focus work. Ask open ended questions and truly listen.
#Influence At Work - asking for something too far away from what someone already agrees with will harden their current position and not move them. Distance.
Berger uses a football field to describe opinions, with extreme views in the end zones + moderate in the center. Each person has a 'Zone of Acceptance' around their opinion; opinions beyond this enter the 'Region of Rejection.' Presenting an idea far from someone's current stance reinforces their existing view.
Solid paper - key comment: "We strongly encourage anyone looking for work in this market, especially if you come from a non-traditional background, to stop spending energy on applying online, full stop. Instead, reach out to hiring managers. The numbers will be on your side there, as relatively few candidates are targeting hiring managers directly." https://interviewing.io/blog/are-recruiters-better-than-a-coin-flip-at-judging-resumes