افرادی مثل ما، کارهارو اینجوری انجام میدن

CHAPTER NINE

People Like Us Do Things Like This

Deep change is difficult, and worth it

As we’ve seen, every organization, every project, every interaction exists to do one thing: to make change happen.

To make a sale, to change a policy, to heal the world.

As marketers and agents of change, we almost always overrate our ability to make change happen. The reason is simple.

Everyone always acts in accordance with their internal narratives.

You can’t get someone to do something that they don’t want to do, and most of the time, what people want to do is take action (or not take action) that reinforces their internal narratives.

The real question, then, is where does the internal narrative come from, and how does it get changed? Or, more likely, how do we use the internal narrative to change the actions that people take?

Some people have an internal narrative that makes them open to changing their behavior (e.g., Quincy Jones likes many kinds of music), while others begin the process with great resistance.

For most of us, though, changing our behavior is driven by our desire to fit in (people like us do things like this) and our perception of our status (affiliation and dominance). Since both these forces often push us to stay as we are, it takes tension to change them.

Once you see these forces at work, you’ll be able to navigate the culture in a whole new way. It will be as if someone turned on the lights and gave you a map.

People like us (do things like this)

Have you eaten crickets? Never mind the crunchy insect-shaped kind, but even cricket flour? In many parts of the world, crickets are a fine source of protein.

What about beef? Even though this is one of the most easily addressed causes of global warming, even though beef is a truly inefficient way to feed the world, it’s safe to say that most people reading this have had beef for lunch or dinner sometime in the last week.

If it’s not genetic, if we’re not born with a predetermined feeling about crickets versus beef, if there are no clear-cut rational reasons to eat one or the other, why do crickets make us squirm while cows make us hungry (or vice versa)?

Because people like us eat things like this.

For most of us, from the first day we are able to remember until the last day we breathe, our actions are primarily driven by one question: “Do people like me do things like this?” People like me don’t cheat on their taxes.

People like me own a car; we don’t take the bus.

People like me have a full-time job.

People like me want to see the new James Bond movie.

Even when we adopt the behavior of an outlier, when we do something the crowd doesn’t often do, we’re still aligning ourselves with the behavior of outliers.

Nobody is unaware and uncaring of what is going on around him. No one who is wholly original, self-directed, and isolated in every way. A sociopath might do things in opposition to the crowd, but he’s not unaware of the crowd.

We can’t change the culture, but each of us has the opportunity to change a culture—our little pocket of the world.

The smallest viable market makes sense because it maximizes your chances of changing a culture. The core of your market, enriched and connected by the change you seek to make, organically shares the word with the next layer of the market. And so on. This is people like us.

Case Study: The Blue Ribbons

My little town had a problem. Despite having extraordinary schools (our elementary school had won the national Blue Ribbon School designation), there was a schism over the upcoming budget vote.

Many in town, particularly longtime residents and second- or third-generation families, were upset about rising school taxes. Some of them organized and, for the first time in memory, the school budget vote failed.

In New York state, the school gets a second vote, but if that fails as well, the mandated cuts are quite draconian, with essential programs cut without thoughtful prioritization. With only eight days before the next vote, what could be done?

A few activists decided to try a new approach. Instead of arguing vociferously in favor of the budget, instead of passing out flyers or holding a rally, they tied one hundred blue ribbons to a big tree in front of the middle school, right in the center of town.

Within days, the idea had spread. In the week before the election, many dozens of trees, all around town, had blue ribbons hanging from them. Thousands of blue ribbons, hung by dozens of families.

The message was simple—people like us, people in our town, people in this Blue Ribbon district, support our schools.

The budget passed two to one.

The internal narrative

We don’t make decisions in a vacuum—instead, we base them on our perception of our cohort. So we buy a $700 baby stroller because we’re smart (or we don’t, because it’s stupid).

Or we shop at the local farmers’ market (or we don’t, because it’s raining, and they don’t sell Cheetos).

We harass the female TV reporter outside the soccer stadium (and lose our jobs) because that’s how we see our people behaving.

Or we wear a bright pink shirt, yellow trousers, and no socks, because, we tell ourselves, they’re comfortable (but mostly it’s because that’s how we imagine a successful version of ourselves.) It’s all built around the simple question: “Do people like me do things like this?” Normalization creates culture, and culture drives our choices, which leads to more normalization.

Marketers don’t make average stuff for average people. Marketers make change. And they do it by normalizing new behaviors.

Defining “us”

In the previous era, mass media worked hard to define “us” as “all of us,” as the crowd, the Americans, the people of the world. All of us never totally succeeded, because the racists and the xenophobes and the isolated were happy to draw the line somewhere short of all of us.

It got very close, though. “I’d like to teach the world to sing” and the commercialization of the entire world happened faster and more deeply than most people expected. We (mostly) all watched Johnny Carson and we (mostly) all wore jeans and we (mostly) all went to school. At least the all that stretched as far as we were willing to see.

Today, though, popular culture isn’t as popular as it used to be. Mad Men, which was hyped by the New York Times in dozens of articles in just one season, was only regularly seen by 1 percent of the U.S. population. And the popular culture phenomenon that is the Cronut, or the deep-fried Oreo at the county fair, or the raw moon pie at the funky restaurant—these phenomena reach, if you’re willing to do a little rounding, basically no one.

We’ve gone from all of us being everyone to all of us being no one.

But that’s okay, because the long tail of culture and the media and change doesn’t need everyone any longer. It’s happy with enough.

Which us?

In “People like us do things like this,” the “us” matters. The more specific, the more connected, the tighter the “us,” the better.

What the marketer, the leader, and the organizer must do as their first job is simple: define “us.” When you say “People like us donate to a charity like this one,” you’re clearly not saying it to everyone. Everyone is not going to give to your charity. So, who is?

The right answer is not “The people who give are people like us.” That’s backwards. We need to be braver than that, more articulate, more willing to take initiative in not only reaching our markets but changing them, changing their expectations, and most of all, changing what they choose to tell and show each other.

The same calculus applies in the internal meeting where you’re pitching a new idea to your company, or the business-to-business sales call you’re making, or the way you hope to shift the culture of the soccer team you coach.

Begin with us.

It shouldn’t be called “the culture”

It should be called “a culture” or “this culture,” because there is no universal culture, no “us” that defines all of us.

When we’re comfortable realizing that our work is to change “a culture,” then we can begin to do two bits of hard work: Map and understand the worldview of the culture we seek to change.

Focus all our energy on this group. Ignore everyone else. Instead, focus on building and living a story that will resonate with the culture we are seeking to change.

That’s how we make change—by caring enough to want to change a culture, and by being brave enough to pick just one.

Just enough art

Entrepreneur Alex Samuel points out that when JetBlue launched, it simply had to be hipper than American and Delta.

But when Virgin America launched six years later, it had to be hipper than JetBlue. That’s a different hurdle. After all, JetBlue had worked hard to be hip. The bar had been raised.

Everything in our culture is part of a hierarchy between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. We don’t get to jump all the way ahead.

Photography works this way, for example. It’s quite easy to be the photographer who is skilled enough to take yesterday’s pictures. Previous styles are technically easy to mimic. That’s straightforward. But to be the one who establishes the next phase takes a leap. A leap into a new way of doing something, just a bit better and a bit unexpected. Leap too far, though, and the tribe won’t follow.

Case Study: Gay marriage in Ireland

One way to pass the world’s first national referendum about the right for gay people to marry would be to state your case, to focus on fairness, respect, and civil rights.

That rational approach won’t get you very far, though.

An alternative? Brighid White and her husband, Paddy, both nearly eighty, made a video about their son and about what it meant to them to support the referendum.

People like us.

It’s easy for some to watch that video and see themselves. As parents. As traditionalists. As Irishmen.

The essence of political change is almost always cultural change, and the culture changes horizontally.

Person to person. Us to us.

Elite and/or exclusive

Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that there’s a difference between an elite institution and an exclusive one.

They can coexist, but often don’t.

The Rhodes Scholarship is an elite award. It goes to few people, and it’s respected by other elite individuals and institutions.

Elite is an external measure. Does the world you care about respect this badge?

But the Rhodes Scholarship isn’t exclusive. It’s not a tribe, a group of well-connected individuals with their own culture.

Exclusive is an internal measure. It’s us versus them, insiders versus outsiders.

The Hell’s Angels aren’t elite, but they’re exclusive.

Harvard Business School is both elite and exclusive. So are the Navy Seals.

It’s easy to get confused in our quest to build something that matters. It seems as though we ought to work to make our organization elite, to let the New York Times proclaim that our opera is worth seeing, or to hope that the upperclassmen will like our performance on the field.

In fact, though, it’s exclusive institutions that change things. We have no control over our elite status, and it can be taken away in an instant. But exclusive organizations thrive as long as their members wish to belong, and that work is something we can control.

At the heart of the exclusive organization is a simple truth: every member is “people like us.” Sign up for that and you gain status. Walk away and you lose it.

In order to change a culture, we begin with an exclusive cohort. That’s where we can offer the most tension and create the most useful connections.

Case Study: Robin Hood Foundation

In 2015, the Robin Hood Foundation raised $101,000,000.

In one night. It was the single most effective fundraiser of its kind in history.

Some people look at this result and conclude that the tactic (a gala) is the secret. It’s not. It’s the extraordinary peer pressure of people like us do things like this.

Robin Hood is a New York charity, supported largely by donations from wealthy hedge fund and Wall Street investors. The foundation had spent a generation building expectations about this event, carefully spreading the word about the generosity of the early adopters while playing into the hyper-competitive egomania of Wall Street. While there were a few anonymous gifts, almost all the money raised revolved around a simple trade: cash for status.

Tension is created by the event. You’re there, your peers are there, your spouse is there. An auction is taking place. The cause is a good one. With a simple act, you can raise your profile, earn respect, and dominate the competition. If that matches your worldview and you believe you can afford it, then money is raised.

Over the years, this narrative is normalized. It’s not extreme, not for this “us.” Instead, it’s what we do.

The intentional nature of this process is easily overlooked. It rarely happens as an unintentional side effect.

The standing ovation

How many people are needed to start a standing ovation?

At TED, it only takes three. If Bill and Al and Sunny leap to their feet, thousands of others will as well.

At a Broadway show, no matter how tepid the response, fifteen strangers spread throughout the theater might be enough.

And at Mezzrow, the awesome jazz club, it’s probably not possible.

So, what’s going on?

In some audiences, there are few strangers. We recognize and respect those around us, and our trust of these people, together with our deeply felt need to fit in, combine to activate a standing ovation. If I desire to be one of “us” and the leader is standing, well, I’ll stand too.

On the other hand, in a venue of strangers, our desire to fit in is a bit different. At the Broadway theater, I’m wearing the tourist hat, and tourists like me respond in ways like this. The venue has a bias.

And the opposite is true among the hardcore jazz fans. They know that jazz fans don’t give standing ovations, not in a club, and the bias of the venue is difficult to change.

Roots and shoots

Here’s an analogy that helps bring to life the ideas we’ve covered so far: Your work is a tree. The roots live in the soil of dreams and desires. Not the dreams and desires of everyone, simply those you seek to serve.

If your work is simply a commodity, a quick response to an obvious demand, then your roots don’t run deep. It’s unlikely that your tree will grow, or even if it does, it’s unlikely to be seen as important, useful, or dominant. It will be crowded out by all the similar trees.

As your tree grows, it creates a beacon for the community. The early adopters among the people you seek to serve can engage with the tree, climb it, use it for shade, and, eventually, eat the fruits. And they attract the others.

If you have planned well, the tree will quickly grow taller, because the sun isn’t being blocked—there are few other trees in the same area. As the tree grows, it not only attracts other people, but its height (as the dominant choice in the neighborhood) blocks out the futile efforts of other, similar trees. The market likes a winner.

It’s a mistake to show up with an acorn and expect a crowd. Work that matters for people who care is the shortest, most direct route to making a difference.