A neighbor was preparing to go walking on a frigid day. “Gotta get my steps in,” she said.
The idea of 10,000 steps has been ingrained in people’s minds as the benchmark for exercise. It’s specific and measurable, and as a result, it has helped many people engage in more fitness activity than they otherwise would have.
Other entities that want to affect behavioral change would be wise to emulate the 10,000 steps idea. It is so much more concrete than “exercise,” which leaves it to the person to guess whether they have done enough or even more than yesterday. If you could track calories as seamlessly and painlessly as you can track steps, I believe people would eat much less.
How can you define the behavior you desire in a defined and trackable way? The more you can help people know and monitor their progress, the more likely you are that their competitive nature will kick in and they will overcome the headwinds to accomplish their goal.
Holiday cards are all very similar, so it’s hard for vendors to distinguish themselves through their products. Shutterfly has found its niche by offering free address printing for its holiday cards. Not only does this save time and hassle, but they do it in a beautifully coordinated font that enhances the envelopes. It could be the deal-maker that causes people to opt for Shutterfly instead of other providers.
It’s a good example of thinking about where your typical work begins and ends — then extending your services one step beyond that. Instead of just cards, Shutterfly is addressing. Another vendor may even consider mailing them.
Think of how you can handle an additional step in your client’s process. At this time of year, many people will trade money for time.
Many animal shelters have an extensive process before someone can adopt or even foster an animal. Our Humane Society has a 3-page application just to foster, including an essay question: “Describe your feelings about euthanasia of an animal for health or temperament reasons,” granting permission for a “home inspection,” and an hour-long process for adoption that “evaluates your lifestyle and reviews your history of pet ownership.” I’ve had less scrutiny when applying for a job.
Contrast that with Anderson Humane in Illinois which works to remove as many barriers as possible. Instead of a six-month commitment to foster, they allow “Doggie Day Out” where people can take a pet for a few hours or a weekend. There is no application or waiting period — walk in, find a pet you like, pay your money, and take them home. Anderson offers events where the pets are brought out into the community, or you can come to their locations to play with the animals. They offer short-term refuge fostering to take temporary care of the pets of people in shelters or deployed. There’s a food pantry and low-cost vet care to help remove the cost barrier for people to retain their pets. Anderson shelters small critters and birds and even has a wildlife rescue program. Their accessible approach allows them to adopt over 4000 animals/year.
Think about the policies and procedures you have in place and whether they foster the ultimate outcomes you seek. Then take a lesson from Anderson and break the mold of how it’s always done. Adopt an innovative process to reduce barriers and make your services easily accessible.
‘Tis the season and for many, gift cards are the present of choice. In theory, they’re a great gift: it’s something to open, no returns are required, and they allow people to pick out something they like.
But in reality, the one who receives the biggest gift is the store that sells them. That’s because over $15 billion in gift cards are unused! A Bankrate.com poll showed that 51% of US adults have gift cards that they have lost, expired, or just failed to use. While it’s tempting to give gift cards for the hard-to-buy-for younger people on your list, with each younger generation, the unused rate increases, to 58% for Millennials and 68% for Gen Z.
So, this holiday season, think twice before you revert to the little plastic present. Go retro and consider cash instead. It’ll be a novelty for younger folks to use real money instead of a card or app!
There are many creative ways to give cash instead of just money in an envelope!
I know many people who only check their mail every few days or so, but I am certainly not one of them. I’m there practically when the postal worker arrives because many days I receive “good mail” and not just bills, solicitations, or junk. I reap what I sow because every.single.day. I send a handwritten letter to someone, with multiple letters written on the weekend.
Smartphones, email, texting, and messenger apps have made the handwritten letter all but obsolete but for those who receive one, it’s still a gift. You can hold and cherish it in ways that electronic communication doesn’t allow, and many letters are saved long after e-messages are deleted.
While you may not be a prolific writer, perhaps you can acknowledge National Letter Writing Day today and take a moment to drop a note in the mail, making someone’s day when they receive it.
I recently presented a workshop about “difficult conversations” where I provided some strategies to help make them more effective. But the piece of my own advice that resonated with me the most was to stop calling them “difficult.”
Sure, saying the hard things is uncomfortable, but all the language around these conversations makes it more daunting. Fierce. Tough. Crucial. Courageous. Heavy. Difficult. No wonder people avoid having them.
Instead, tell yourself that they are “important” conversations. It may help overcome the natural inertia that comes from trying to avoid something you don’t want to do. Humans are masterful procrastinators and rationalization-ators and putting off something that is “difficult” would top the list of what to avoid.
Focus instead on the important outcomes that occur by having these conversations instead of the seemingly difficult process of getting there.
I attended a talk by Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up with Your Phone. The main part of her message was a cautionary tale about the intentional “brain hacking” that builds dopamine features into smartphones and apps, and how detrimental and addictive screen time has become. She quoted Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, who called phones “the great rewiring of childhood, from play-based to phone-based.”
Perhaps because I was not one of the parents in the room with a child to protect, the part of her talk that resonated the most was when she shared strategies to reduce the desire to be on your phone. “Fun is a feeling, not an activity,” she said, encouraging us to be aware of the delights around us. When we are conscious of something that delights us, Price suggests we point at it and say “delight” out loud — making us feel a bit more alive.
Even she admitted that it sounds crazy, but I’ve been doing it for the few weeks since her talk and it has made me realize that I experience “delights” more than I would have guessed. I’m in perpetual “delight” mode with my beloved dogs, but I’ve also been delighted by walking through a blanket of Ginkgo Biloba leaves and by the just-right picture I found for a PowerPoint slide. I’ve delight-pointed at a jar of seashells and beach glass that I found for 25 cents at a sale and at the bouquet of Christmas cactus flowers blooming in my office. I’m not sure I would have given any of those more than a passing glance before committing to her goofy activity.
Certainly, you would be wise to heed all her serious warnings about smartphone addiction — but take her advice on the delight activity as well. With so much heavy in the world around us, it’s nice to be reminded that there is joy there, too.
A blanket of Ginkgo Biloba leaves covering the sidewalk in Washington Park
If I said the word “icebreaker” at the beginning of a workshop, I’d hear a collective groan. No one beyond Kindergarten admits to liking them. But I can’t just jump into the content in a meeting, class, or workshop without a mental transition exercise. Hence, the runway.
People seem to accept that runways are necessary before a plane can fly. They are also valuable exercises to help participants refocus and prepare to settle in and get to the content. I do them at the beginning of every session.
Runway exercises usually aren’t the traditional “getting acquainted” type of question, rather they set the stage for what is to follow. For instance, I ask people to find as many pairs as they can see in the room (e.g. two light switches next to each other, window panes that divide into two, two notebooks side by side on a table, etc.) Then I lean into the lesson that what you focus on is what you see — certainly no one paid attention to those pairs before we started. You can do the same thing by asking people to find circles (e.g. buttons, light fixtures, indents in the carpet from chairs, etc.). I’ve had people find something they physically had in common with someone else (e.g. wearing green, shoes that tie, dangle earrings, etc.) — illustrating that we have commonalities if we take the time to look for them.
I’ve also used this exercise to prep people for the content that follows. “Share a time you had a difficult conversation” is the runway for a workshop on that subject. “Tell someone about a successful collaboration” starts the partnership workshop, and “Who models high Emotional Intelligence for you” leads into the EI topic. You get the idea.
The point is that you can achieve the benefits of an icebreaker without the dread. In fact, using a runway exercise better prepares your participants to absorb the content you’re about to share. Help your next meeting or workshop achieve greater heights by starting off from the runway instead of the tarmac.
I had a student take me up on my offer to talk through her final project if she got stuck. She called and I asked her a few questions — and even though we were on the phone, I could see the light bulb go off over her head. I gave no solutions or even suggestions, but my questions helped her see that she already had the answers, they just weren’t framed that way.
I tried to model this same behavior as a supervisor — providing more questions than answers and helping others see that, in more cases than not, the information that was eluding them was there all along. It’s also why the strategy of asking yourself what advice you would give your friend in your situation often resolves the issue — you know what to do, but you just can’t see it from your current perspective.
If you find yourself at an impasse, don’t go round and round on your own. Seek out someone else — literally or metaphorically — to provide the questions that will uncover your hidden answers.
How do you move a 4-ton elephant? It sounds like the opening line of a joke, but in Africa, it was a serious problem. A zoo wanted to retire an elephant and move it into a sanctuary for its final years, but this necessitated an hour-long transport.
An “elephant mover specialist” was brought in to do the job. Instead of tranquilizing the elephant, he trained it to associate a “training wall” with treats. This wall resembled one side of the transport cage, so ultimately the elephant willingly walked into the container and was moved.
I think of all the supervisors who do the equivalent of tranquilizing their employees — using their power over their team — instead of spending the time to demonstrate and reward the desired behaviors. It may work in the short term, but to have true long-term success you need to help your staff willingly do what you need them to do. Be like an elephant and never forget that principle!
