We have choices to make every minute of our lives. And there is a growing suspicion that we should make them faster and more accurately. Time is money, we don’t have all day, the team is depending on it, and revenue will be affected.
Baba Shiv is the director of strategic marketing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He has been studying behavior and neuroeconomics with a focus on motivation and emotion for many years.
Make Your Choice
Research has shown a counterintuitive fact about human nature which is sometimes having too much choice makes us less happy. Baba shares a personal story and some of his findings which measure why choice opens the door to doubt. He suggests that ceding control can often be the best strategy.
Some feel leadership is about being in charge and making the final call. But in a fully collaborative enterprise, responsibility can often be enhanced by allowing others drive choices. We may not want to be the one who makes all the decisions after all.
Kneale Mann
TED | Baba Shiv
Showing posts with label Stanford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanford. Show all posts
August 2, 2012
July 23, 2012
Marshmallow Logic
We don’t want to wait until next quarter to see if that new initiative worked. If there’s an easier way, we generally pick it. Credit cards and impulse buys are tied at the hip. Three year olds have more patience than most grown-ups. You see it on the social web. People start a LinkedIn group or Facebook page and wonder why new customers aren’t stampeding into their arms in a matter of days.
Want it Now
It occurs in the business world when a group has an idea and wants investors and customers to flow to their door. There's seemingly endless examples in leadership when someone reaches another achievement and wants the rest of the team to immediately embrace it.
It can be found with high potential leaders who want to fast track to VP stripes and omit all that pesky work that’s involved in earning them. It’s the guy tailgating you in traffic or the kid who wants to grow up too fast or the woman who can’t believe there are people in line at the gas station when she needs gas, and the list goes on.
Two for One
Imagine if you can have one million bucks right now, tax free. Interested? Well before you jump at it, you can choose the second option which is two million bucks, tax free. The catch, you have to wait a month to get it. The choice is a million now or two million in 30 days. The decision seems obvious. Or does it?
More than forty years ago at Stanford University, Walter Mischel and his team conducted a study on deferred gratification. The premise was simple. Each child was offered a choice – one marshmallow now or two later. The facilitator then left the child in the room with the treat for 15-20 minutes. More than 80% couldn't wait.
Wait and Succeed
Mischel’s team analyzed how long each child resisted the temptation and whether or not doing so was correlated with future achievements. They followed many of the kids for the next few years to document any patterns.
The marshmallow experiment has been challenged, replicated and accepted. Some of the brightest have studied will power and linked our ability to control ourselves to our health, wealth, leadership abilities, and success.
How's your patience?
Kneale Mann
flickr | walter mischel
April 4, 2011
Your Idea Could Save a Life
That may sound like a provocative notion but think about all those ideas that are rolling around in your mind. Yesterday we discussed thinking big versus doing big.
Sebastian Thrun is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the Stanford AI Lab. His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence.
He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanley is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian. Sebastian has been working toward a time when we no longer drive our cars. You may think this TEDTalk is about technology and gadgets. It is about a far more important idea.
It's also really freakin' cool! [video]
Kneale Mann
visual credit: TED
Sebastian Thrun is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the Stanford AI Lab. His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence.
He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Stanley is now on exhibit at the Smithsonian. Sebastian has been working toward a time when we no longer drive our cars. You may think this TEDTalk is about technology and gadgets. It is about a far more important idea.
It's also really freakin' cool! [video]
Kneale Mann
visual credit: TED
March 6, 2009
Social Media Expert: Fact or Fiction?
The trouble with experience is the final exam comes before the lesson.
Author Unknown
As the world changes – because it always does – and we all get much too distracted by bad news and unfocused on trivial minutiae, there is a quite a bit of chatter about the value of social media.
You'd swear someone just poured blood in the pool and the sharks are hungry.
We have been building relationships, communicating, gathering in groups and satisfying our need to belong since the days of clubs and caves. And this is not a human thing, I’m sure the animal kingdom has their version of Twitter.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Mae Brown
As soon as you call yourself an expert, you run the risk of telling others you have learned all there is to know about a topic. The word 'expert' is misused more than the word 'irony'.
I hope my mechanic knows how to fix my car but I'd like to hope he is always learning about new and better techniques. Whenever you hear about a new wonder pill (the one with more side effects and warnings than benefits) there is always the requisite "call your doctor" mention. So, your doctor better stay on top of this stuff in case you ask her about it.
No one is a social media expert.
I worked in the radio industry for many years, had the amazing privilege of overseeing the launch of radio stations, made countless friends and built lifelong relationships. Does that make me a radio expert? Absolutely not. You may have never stepped inside a radio station, so I may know more about how they operate than you. So what, it means nothing.
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
We are all experts and we are all learning.
It matters not whether you have a PhD in Finance or a Masters in English, if you cannot share knowledge and information so others can learn and share with you – letters and degrees and experience means nothing.
Education is when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get when you don't.
Pete Seeger
Where social media becomes a stumbling block for many people is when they treat it like another advertising medium – that is suicide. I was speaking with a colleague recently about social media and after an hour of explanation he said those five infamous words – “I know what I’m doing”. He then sealed the deal with seven more - "It worked for me in the past."
The world is your school.
Martin H. Fischer
He is looking for a social media expert to guarantee success. This is a horrible time to challenge ROI and metrics though many are attempting to do that. If you attempt to weigh an elephant with a produce scale, the chances of getting an accurate reading are remote - okay, impossible.
If you can guarantee your customers absolute success, buy a money printing machine and send us a postcard.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
Andre Gide 1891
Social media is not the golden bullet to save us from the abyss. But it is for real and it is here to stay. It will continue to evolve but at the core is our human need to build relationships.
Then again, that’s just my opinion. I’m no expert on the topic.
What are your thoughts?
@knealemann
Author Unknown
As the world changes – because it always does – and we all get much too distracted by bad news and unfocused on trivial minutiae, there is a quite a bit of chatter about the value of social media.
You'd swear someone just poured blood in the pool and the sharks are hungry.
We have been building relationships, communicating, gathering in groups and satisfying our need to belong since the days of clubs and caves. And this is not a human thing, I’m sure the animal kingdom has their version of Twitter.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Mae Brown
As soon as you call yourself an expert, you run the risk of telling others you have learned all there is to know about a topic. The word 'expert' is misused more than the word 'irony'.
I hope my mechanic knows how to fix my car but I'd like to hope he is always learning about new and better techniques. Whenever you hear about a new wonder pill (the one with more side effects and warnings than benefits) there is always the requisite "call your doctor" mention. So, your doctor better stay on top of this stuff in case you ask her about it.
No one is a social media expert.
I worked in the radio industry for many years, had the amazing privilege of overseeing the launch of radio stations, made countless friends and built lifelong relationships. Does that make me a radio expert? Absolutely not. You may have never stepped inside a radio station, so I may know more about how they operate than you. So what, it means nothing.
Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
We are all experts and we are all learning.
It matters not whether you have a PhD in Finance or a Masters in English, if you cannot share knowledge and information so others can learn and share with you – letters and degrees and experience means nothing.
Education is when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get when you don't.
Pete Seeger
Where social media becomes a stumbling block for many people is when they treat it like another advertising medium – that is suicide. I was speaking with a colleague recently about social media and after an hour of explanation he said those five infamous words – “I know what I’m doing”. He then sealed the deal with seven more - "It worked for me in the past."
The world is your school.
Martin H. Fischer
He is looking for a social media expert to guarantee success. This is a horrible time to challenge ROI and metrics though many are attempting to do that. If you attempt to weigh an elephant with a produce scale, the chances of getting an accurate reading are remote - okay, impossible.
If you can guarantee your customers absolute success, buy a money printing machine and send us a postcard.
Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
Andre Gide 1891
Social media is not the golden bullet to save us from the abyss. But it is for real and it is here to stay. It will continue to evolve but at the core is our human need to build relationships.
Then again, that’s just my opinion. I’m no expert on the topic.
What are your thoughts?
@knealemann
