Caught
Last week, I was surprised that Uber wouldn’t accept my booking until I uploaded a photo of myself wearing a mask. The app guided me through the process, and it took less than a minute.
When I got to my client’s offices, I mentioned this to the group I was running a strategy workshop with and one of the participants said that I was singled out, because I’d been reported for NOT wearing a mask on a prior trip.
Now, he was right — since the end of mask mandates in Victoria, I’ve often NOT carried one with me, and sometime forget to wear one on public transport - and in Ubers. But an Uber driver had ‘pinged’ me and now I’m recorded somewhere as a non-compliant rider.
This is a great example, though, of what my regulatory authority clients call “risk-based regulation”: it’s where they tailor their use of enforcement based on the severity — and behavioural drivers — of non-compliance. Presumably, only a small percentage of people like me exist - and are reported — therefore it doesn’t make sense to ‘penalise’ or obstruct every rider.
I’m curious to see how long this stays in place (for me) — I predict that after three rides, if I’m compliant, I’ll be back to being treated as a normal, law-abiding citizen by Uber.
Question: How do you develop interventions that target your highest need customers only?
Preserving dignity
Regular readers amongst you know that I love a historical photo that tells a fascinating story, so here’s another one. What is this of? If I tell you it’s from the 1930s, does that give you a clue?
During the Great Depression, many farming women couldn’t afford to make, let alone buy, clothes for themselves and their families and the poorest of them made clothes from wheat bags.
So, the Kansas Wheat company had a brain-wave. They printed their cotton wheat bags with floral and patterned motifs, so women could make dresses for themselves and their daughters.
They ensured their labels could wash off, and some bags even had dress patterns printed onto the inside. Like Hyundai offering a “no questions asked” return of cars to people who lost their jobs during the 2009 financial crisis, this was a marketing tactic that not only sensitively recognised that people were going through difficult times, but also created loyalty to a brand which lasted well beyond the Depression years.
Question: What win-win strategies can your organisation use to look after people who are undergoing hard times while benefiting the business?
Safety at scale
Years ago, a doctor friend was driving on a country road, her two small children strapped into the back seats. At a four-way intersection, another car didn’t give way, and slammed into her, side-on. Her car rolled, sideways, several times, before it came to rest, on its roof.
She related the story afterwards, “I was relieved, because I could hear my children screaming. It meant they were both alive”.
Of course, it was the seat belts that allowed our friend, and her children, to walk from the wreckage, shaken but otherwise uninjured.
Now, I knew that my home state of Victoria, in Australia, was the world’s first jurisdiction to mandate seat belts back in 1970, the same year that my mother got her driving license. I remember her insisting on a car with seat belts in the back seats as well as the front (it was only the latter that were legally required).
What I didn’t know is how difficult it was to convince people to wear them. In the US, Ford and Nash offered them optionally from the mid-1950s, and only 2% of Ford buyers chose them. For Nash it was even worse, with buyers asking the company to stop offering them.
The modern 3 point seat belt was invented by Nils Bohlin, a Volvo engineer, and from 1959 Volvo decided to NOT make it an option. Other manufacturers only followed Volvo’s lead from 1969, after Volvo decided to make the rights to the belts free of use, worldwide.
Since then, Bohlin’s invention has saved, conservatively, at least a million lives, which puts him in the small number of individuals whose ‘a-ha’ moment has changed the course of entire communities.
Question: What societally beneficial invention should be free of restriction to enable universal use?
I was with a client organisation this week where numerous people came to speak to me, not about our project, but about this newsletter. Some of them had subscribed for years, so it was a great to hear how much they enjoy reading.
If you do too, please at least click the ‘heart’ below, and consider also sending it on to someone else who might like it.
Until next Friday, enjoy recognising your own individuality while being part of a larger society. And, if you’re in Melbourne, I hope the team you’re following rewards you with a win in Saturday’s Grand Final.
Andrew
Dan Andrews has saved your embarrassment and no masks needed anymore so you will not know if you were to be "released"!