It’s all about the numbers, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2004

On change, systems, influences, uncertainty and defining goals…

• Seth Godin:

  I hope all of you are doing something that makes your grandparents uncomfortable

  (via Jay Parkinson, who is working on something making many grandparents uncomfortable.)

• Zoë Westhof (@zoewesthof), Why I’m Not Realistic:
  

  I choose to embrace change and uncertainty, because I don’t think any of us can rely on certainty anymore. If realistic means sticking to the conventions that are quickly falling into irrelevance, then I choose to be unrealistic.

• How are conventions, systems and institutions adapting to the new reality of constant disruption?

  Perhaps far worse than we thought.

• Continuing on the topic, whenever I read about complex adaptive systems, I keep thinking about the danger of over-optimization and the impossibility of perfection.
• Mike Bonifer (@bonifer), Three Moves (You Can Make Right Now to Change the Game):
  

  There are two issues with focusing exclusively on our goals. The first is that the people with whom we share our scenes usually have different goals from ours. … Focusing only on our desired outcomes can result in a tug-of-war for control of a scene, severely limiting the scene’s progress and potential. Not good.

  The second, and bigger, issue with being exclusively goal-oriented in our scenes, is that we diminish our potential for breakthrough moves. Breakthroughs reveal unexpected avenues for productivity. Breakthroughs can only happen if we are willing to let go of our expectations about what a scene needs to achieve. And what is a goal but an expectation for a scene?

  … When the goal is in our head, it has, in effect, already happened, and what we’re doing in our scenes is trying to re-live history, a very personal and private history that our scene partners likely do not share. When we let a scene define its own goals, we give ourselves and our scene partners the potential to make history together. Creating a shared history is what branding is all about.

• Noah Goldstein, Changing Minds and Changing Towels, via Sean Howard:
  

  We found that by simply changing a few words on the standard sign, guests who learned that the majority of their fellow guests had reused their towels (the social norms appeal) were 26% more likely than those who saw the basic environmental protection message to recycle their towels.

  … So, does this mean that we’re just sheep? Not necessarily. But we’re definitely more likely to follow the herd when we’re uncertain about how to behave. And it turns out that we’re also more likely to follow the herd to the extent that we perceive the herd as sharing our circumstances.

  The takeaway: be very careful how you define your systems, environments and goals; incentives, influences and social proof are very powerful forces. Remember, change or be changed.