Summer Edition #2 - I'm an individual - or am I?

Summer Edition #2

Caught

During the COVID lockdowns, 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 — I often did NOT carry one with me and sometimes forgot to wear one on public transport - and in Ubers. But an Uber driver had ‘pinged’ me and I was 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.

Only a small percentage of people like me exist - and are reported — therefore it doesn’t make sense to ‘penalise’ or obstruct every rider.

Question: How do you develop interventions that target your highest need customers only?

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Giving feedback to defensive people (Part 2)

Last week I wrote about how to use the PEAR strategy to give feedback to minimise defensiveness, so this week I’ll follow through by describing my approach when I get one of the following replies in response to feedback:

• Deny: “No, that’s not what happened at all”

• Blame: “Yes, but it wasn’t my fault because . . .”

• Justify: “Yes, but the reason for that was . . .”

• Compare: “Yes, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who . . .”

• Attack: “Yes, but it’s YOUR fault for being so [INSERT COUNTER-CRITICISM]”

If we ask, “Why are people defensive?” it helps us understand how to deal with it. Firstly, have you EVER done any of the above? Of course you have. We all have. I’m particularly expert at justification, for instance. The reason we get good at these is because they work for us. In other words, people leave us alone, and drop the criticism.

Instead, then, the way ahead is to NOT drop it, but to use a technique I call reflect (their message) and return (to PEAR):

1. Reflect: “So what you’re saying is [INSERT DEFENSIVE RESPONSE]”

2. Return: “Given that, can we agree on [INSERT EFFECTS]” or “Given that, what could we do to [INSERT ALTERNATIVES"]” or “Given that, how could we best [INSERT RESULT]?”

What you will find is that 80% of people respond well to PEAR alone. Of the 20% remaining, 80% will respond well to Reflect & Return. Again, it presumes decent rapport, timing and tone.

Question: How easily can you redirect a person to the issue when they attempt to derail your feedback?

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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?

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I was with a client organisation recently 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.

It’s the end of the year, so if you’ve enjoyed reading throughout 2024, please click the ‘heart’ below, and consider sending it on to someone else who might like it.

For those of you celebrating festivities in the coming week, have a great Christmas and/or Hannukah with family and friends, and I’ll be back with you again next Friday.

Andrew