Stories, science and secrets from the world’s brightest thought-leaders. Behavioral Grooves is the podcast that satisfies your curiosity of why we do what we do. Explanations of human behavior that will improve your relationships, your wellbeing, and your organization by helping you find your groove.
Episodes
Sunday Jun 30, 2019
Nurit Nobel: De-Biasing the Recruiting Process
Sunday Jun 30, 2019
Sunday Jun 30, 2019
In this episode, we spoke with Nurit Nobel, who is living in Stockholm, Sweden where she’s working on her PhD. Nurit is a co-founder of Impactually, along with one of our favorite guests, Christina Gravert, PhD. Impactually is a behavioral science consultancy that is firmly grounded in both academic rigor and real-world experience.
Nurit, who is related by marriage to the family associated with the Nobel Prize, talked about Impactually’s BOOST model, which is a practical tool for behavior change. The majority of our conversation was focused on a client case study about de-biasing the recruitment and hiring processes. Her client’s intentions were all in the right places; however, the firm still ended up hiring new employees that were fundamentally the same as the existing employees.
The research Nurit relied on to de-bias the hiring process was originally conducted by Iris Bohnet at Harvard, and it is focused on modifying the process in order to overrule our natural biases. Nurit and her team put the research to good use and our discussion dove into the nitty gritty of the issues they dealt with as well as the results they’re getting under the new process.
We also talked about the Lindy Hop, a pre-World War II dance developed in Harlem, and Sweden’s fascinating revival of it.
We hope you enjoy our conversation with Nurit
Links
Nurit Nobel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nnobel/
Twitter: @nuritnobel
Impactually: http://impactually.se and https://impactually.teachable.com/ for the BOOST online course
Iris Bohnet, PhD, Harvard University: https://scholar.harvard.edu/iris_bohnet/home
Kahneman & Levav on judges after lunch: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break
Christina Gravert: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cgravert/
South by Southwest (SXSW): https://www.sxsw.com/attend/
Richard Thaler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Thaler
Dan Ariely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely
April Seifert, PhD: https://www.aprilseifert.com/
Laurie Santos and the GI Joe Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimHHAID_P0
Brexit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit
Muzak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzak
Lindy Hop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KO7b9qbfU
Frankie Manning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Manning
“Sonic Boom,” by Joel Beckerman: https://thesonicboom.joelbeckerman.com/
Tim Houlihan, “Washington Square”: https://soundcloud.com/timhoulihan/washington-square
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
Thomas Steenburgh: On Selling New Products
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
Sunday Jun 23, 2019
We are excited to re-share our favorite episodes from time to time and this discussion with Tom was terrifically informative about the sales managers can be more effective at introducing new products to their sales team.
Thomas Steenburgh, PhD is a senior professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Tom spent a good portion of his career in the corporate world and before he departed for academia, he held senior positions at Xerox Corporation, ending his work there as head of the US Direct Incentive Strategy with a budget of $140 million budget for 4,000 salespeople Tom has partnered with Mike Ahearne, PhD from the University of Houston (featured in a June 2018 episode of Behavioral Grooves) on extensive research related to the performance and management of sales reps.
Recently, the two of them developed ground-breaking research on how to help sales reps be more successful when they are asked to sell new products. Tom and Mike invested 5 years in gathering data from sales managers, salespeople, and even customers. The insights they gained were especially valuable for those working in sales leadership positions.
There were three primary discoveries we discussed with Tom. The first is that the best asset for a sales rep to have when it comes to selling new products is a learning mindset. A learning mindset, as described by Tom, is what comes from a sales rep’s innate curiosity about customers, their environment and their needs. As intuitive as that sounds, it’s a lot less common than we imagine.
Reps with learning mindsets spend more time discussing the market trends affecting the customers as well as the situations and the specific needs their customers have before they start into selling new products. This deep investigation into each customer’s situation contributes to increased success when they start selling. The downside is that it takes more time and reduces output while they’re doing that investigation. Sales managers who are anxious to keep the numbers up from month to month may struggle with this. Tom highlighted a few ways to work around this in the short term.
The second big discovery was the disconnect between sales reps and their customers in how they perceive the strengths of the reps. In other words, customers were asked to rate reps on a variety of scales and reps were asked to the same of themselves. When considering the rep’s strengths, customers tended to rate sales reps very differently than reps rated themselves. The only dimension the reps and customers agreed on was on the sales rep’s product knowledge. Customers were more likely to give reps lower scores on reps’ learning mindsets, adaptability and openness than the reps gave themselves. This revealed big blind spots.
The third big discovery was the role of the rep’s emotional wellbeing in the selling process. We recognize that selling new products can be hard on the reps, but it’s vital to the company’s long-term success. Tom’s research revealed that sales reps need to become change agents within the organization as well as masters to change their own selling methods. These changes, along with saving face with clients, can cause significant emotional challenges – a component that has been undervalued in the past.
It turns out that reps were surprised by the stark contrast between how easy it was to get customers to take meetings and how difficult it was to close deals after the initial interest. Unfortunately, most sales reps failed to do the deep investigation to understand who the best target for the new product would be, so many of their meetings were wastes of time.
We also talked about the importance of strategic account reps with their broader viewpoints and longer-term orientations and how they can be leaders in new product introductions. And we discussed Neil Rackham, the creator of SPIN selling and author of books on consultative selling.
Of course, we also discussed Tom’s eclectic tastes in music. Apparently, he has seemingly equal interest in the works of Philip Glass, great American contemporary composer of minimalist orchestral music and John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards, who are responsible for some of the greatest covers of Ornette Coleman’s classic sax tunes. But Tom also listens to the sweet and simple Americana melodies of Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch. Not to be outdone with another left-turn, Tom paid special note to Kurt Weill, the early 20th-century composer of The Threepenny Opera which featured the song “Mack The Knife” (lyrics by Berthold Brecht). It was popularized by Bobby Darin in 1958, then Ella Fitzgerald in her 1960 performance Live in Berlin, which we’ve referenced before as one of the greatest live recordings – ever. Our own notes included references to The Who’s Tommy and Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
Thomas Steenburgh, PhD: https://www.darden.virginia.edu/faculty-research/directory/thomas-j-steenburgh/
In our grooving session, we expanded on Tom’s mention of learning mindset and we brought up Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. The intersection of these two concepts is very cool.
Finally, Kurt and Tim help companies with sales compensation, sales incentive structures and selecting the most motivational rewards, don’t hesitate to start a conversation with us. You might be a sales leader with questions, and we can help answer them. We’d love to help your organization improve your bottom line with a behavioral lens.
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Jonathan Mann: Integrating Behavioral Science into User Experience
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
Sunday Jun 16, 2019
The role of the User Experience (UX) designer is growing in corporations around the world. UX Designers have a great deal of influence over how a customer CAN take an action. Relatedly, behavioral scientists are interested in addressing the issue of WILL a customer take an action. What if the two were fused?
In this episode, Jonathan Mann explores ways in which the UX designer and the behavioral scientist can merge into one, combining the CAN and WILL elements for more effective – and ethical – marketing messages. He relates his experiences from studies he performed at PayPal under the direction of renowned researcher Robert Cialdini, PhD. Their work applied the element of social proof to advertising that increased validation – the act of connecting a bank account to a PayPal account – with a dramatic effect. Millions of dollars of compounding annual revenue materialized after A/B testing a variety of messages.
Jonathan cleverly leverages The Year of the Shark and the terrific elephant & rider metaphor to drive home the important message that marketing will be most successful when it appeals to both the rider (the rational part of the brain) and the elephant (the emotional part of the brain).
In the grooving session, Kurt & Tim discuss the ethical application of such powerful tools and what songs we might use for priming in particular situations.
Special thanks to Stefani Simon, president of Inprela Public Relations, for hosting this event: https://inprela.com/
Links
Jonathan Mann: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdmann/
Jonathan’s Deck from the presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pa1CvMOQzWUpreQpirDGSjTEoDl3gPCg
Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.influenceatwork.com/
Galeophobia: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=12518
Summer of the Shark Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzVC6tBTaQ8
Jonathan Haidt / Elephant and the Rider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9KP8uiGZTs
Ovid, Metamorphisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses
Discount Distance Congruity Effect (Coulter & Norberg): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740809000266
Visual Depiction Event (Coulter): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3760/a10d0adf5636bbd18f9804fb11ce77a02195.pdf
Auditory Price Perception Effect (Coulter): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.11.005
All definitions of Behavioral Science Principles including Present Bias, Availability Heuristic, Social Proof among others can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHpBr0VFcaT8wIUpr-9zMIb79dFMgOVFRxIZRybiftI/edit#
Cialdini Hotel Towel reuse: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/118359.pdf
Cialdini 6 Principles of Persuasion: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/
“Don’t Make Me Think,” by Steve Krug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think
“People are People,” By Depeche Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzGnX-MbYE4
EDM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Grooving: On Scarcity
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
Sunday Jun 09, 2019
This episode is a discussion on the principle of scarcity. Kurt and Tim illuminate the power of this very fundamental effect in behavioral science with some real-world examples. Simply put, the scarcity effect is that people want more of those things they can have less of. It’s terribly powerful and is evident in many aspects of our lives.
“Sale ends tomorrow” is one of the strongest tools in a marketer’s handbook, and Kurt and Tim discuss that and others and the ways they impact behavior. We also talk about the implications of scarcity and how scarcity helps us prioritize and can actually increase focus in our lives.
This episode is the third in our series on the Principles of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, PhD. The other principles from Cialdini’s work have been discussed in previous episodes and you can check them out at the Behavioral Grooves website. The principle of Reciprocity was overviewed in episode #57 and the principle of Consistency was discussed through the lens of politicians and politics in episode #49. Please check them out if you’re interested in Cialdini’s Persuasion Principles.
Also, please leave us a quick rating and review. We benefit greatly from your support and you only have a few minutes left to do it today!
LINKS
Principles of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini, PhD: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/
Stephen Worchel, Jerry Lee & Akanbi Adawole, (1975) “Effects of supply and demand on ratings of object value” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(5), 906-914. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-03817-001
Sendhil Mullainathan& Eldar Shafir, (2013) Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Times Books. https://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Having-Little-Means-Much/dp/0805092641/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Tim Urban blog: Wait But Why? https://waitbutwhy.com/
Kurt Nelson: Twitter: @motivationguru or @whatmotivates and LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan:Twitter: @THoulihan and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Sunday Jun 02, 2019
Terry Esau: Carbon Fiber Therapist
Sunday Jun 02, 2019
Sunday Jun 02, 2019
Terry Esau is the founder of Free Bikes 4 Kids, a non-profit based in Minneapolis that collects and distributes tens of thousands of bikes to needy children every year around the holiday season. He’s not as well-known as some of our guests, but his story will engage even the savviest marketers and HR executives. Terry realized early on that growing the organization would require meaningful marketing, smooth operations, and a phalanx of well-trained volunteers. To streamline these functions, he turned to Kaizen / Lean analysis and employed a host of behavioral science tools, without all the terminology. As a result, he is maximizing the organization’s mission to bring FREE bikes to kids.
Terry is what we call an Accidental Behavioral Scientist. His work clearly demonstrates the application of foundational behavioral science principles, yet he is unaware of the principles by name or theory. He has applied behavioral science principles to how kids (and their parents) shop for their free bikes and how volunteers are vetted and trained. In roughly 8 weeks, more than 20,000 volunteer hours are put into the collection, repair and distribution of bikes in each city. And it all happens with remarkably high satisfaction for both the riders and the volunteers.
Terry is an avid bicyclist, and he is also a published author and speaker. However, he spent most of his career composing music for documentary films, television and radio advertising. He composed and produced music for over 2,000 TV commercials for clients including Target, McDonalds, Pepsi, Harley Davidson, Honda, Subway, Perkins, Golden Grahams and even Kitty Litter. He’s even has won a Clio award for his work in advertising.
In our grooving session, Kurt and Tim suss out the ways Terry leverages the endowment effect and uses choice architecture to guide kids and parents on the journey of getting a new bike. We also talked about the psychological effects that music has on the taste of food. Not just another rabbit hole, but a very interesting discussion!
We hope you enjoy the discussion with Terry Esau. If you would like to learn about how to bring Free Bikes for Kids to your city, please contact him directly: terry@fb4k.org
Links
Terry Esau: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-esau-8692042/
Terry Esau email: terry@fb4k.org and on Twitter: @FB4K
Free Bikes for Kids: http://fb4k.org/
Feed My Starving Children: https://www.fmsc.org/
Kaizen / Lean: https://asq.org/training/lean-kaizen-a-simplified-approach-to-process-improvement-kaizen
QBP (Quality Bike Parts): https://qbp.com/
Guthrie Theater: https://www.guthrietheater.org/
British Advertising Awards (Arrows): https://www.britisharrows.com/british-arrows-2018/
The Current (radio): https://www.thecurrent.org/
“Differentiate or Die” by Jack Trout: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/105146.Differentiate_or_Die
“This is Your Brain on Music” by Dan Levitin: http://daniellevitin.com/publicpage/books/this-is-your-brain-on-music/
Autotune: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune
“The Service Profit Chain” by James Heskett: https://hbr.org/2008/07/putting-the-service-profit-chain-to-work
Kurt Nelson: @motivationguru and https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtwnelson/
Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan and https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-houlihan-b-e/
Check out the Behavioral Grooves website: https://behavioralgrooves.com/
Artists
Crosby, Stills & Nash: https://www.csny.com/
Blood Sweat & Tears: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_%26_Tears
Alice Cooper: https://alicecooper.com/
Amy Grant: https://amygrant.com/
Keith Richards: http://www.keithrichards.com/