#0034 - Carrots or sticks?
There are new and innovative companies that come up all the time, but have you wondered as to why none are able to disrupt the technological giants like Amazon or Google?
Daniel Kahneman, the famous behavioural psychologist, gives us a possible explanation:
The basic psychological rule, if you want people to behave in a particular way, is to make it easy for them. That, by the way, is very different from incentives… The social psychologist Kurt Lewin had, around the end of World War II, developed ideas of how you change behavior. And he distinguished two essential ways of changing behavior. That is, you can apply pressure in the direction where you want people to go or you can ask a very different question, which is: Why aren’t they going there by themselves? That is, what is preventing them from doing what you think they should do? And then remove obstacles; make it easier for people to do. I think that’s the best psychological idea I know, this distinction between applying pressure and making things easier, removing obstacles. And pressure… that’s important. Pressure is incentives, pressure is threats, and pressure is arguments.
These technological giants have become the de facto leaders in their space by removing obstacles for their consumers. Amazon has made it absolutely easy to buy anything online, while Google has made a world without online search unimaginable. While they might have started with positive / negative pressures, they have cemented their positions & continue to grow only by making their consumer lives’ easier.
Ever since I heard Kahneman’s take last year, I’ve been trying to figure where all it applies, and am able to relate to the idea almost everywhere.
For an instance, while good feedback from a reader (positive,) or the shame of not putting up a post (negative) influence me to write every week, I’ve written my best posts when I’ve not had any distractions (obstacles.) On such weeks, I’ve had enough time to deeply think through the idea, embed a structure & diligently edit the post after writing.
Now, what problems would you like to solve by removing the obstacles rather than figuring carrots & sticks?
Cheers,
Kalaikovan