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CHAPTER TEN

Trust and Tension Create Forward Motion

Pattern match/pattern interrupt

You’re going to do one or the other.

The pattern match is business as usual. When the offering you bring matches the story we tell ourselves, the way we tell it, the pace we’re used to, the expense and the risk . . . it’s an easy choice to add you to the mix.

Consider the family with young kids that’s used to a never-ending parade of breakfast cereals. Cocoa Krispies led to Lucky Charms led to Frosted Flakes—whichever one is on sale or has a cool promo (that a kid yells about). When your new brand of cereal shows up, buying it is a pattern match. Sure, why not?

Or it might be as simple as a sitcom on Thursday night at 9 p.m. Millions sit down every week to watch TV . . . you’re not trying to change their pattern; you’re simply putting your new offering into the mix that already exists.

A pattern interrupt, on the other hand, requires some sort of jolt. Tension is created, and energy is diverted to consider this new input. Is it something worth considering? Most of the time, for most of those you seek to reach, the answer is no. The answer is no because the patterns are established, time is precious, and risk is something to be feared.

If you want someone who has never hired a gardener to hire you to be their gardener, you’re asking for a pattern interrupt. If you are trying to secure a five thousand-dollar donation from a wealthy person who habitually makes hundred-dollar donations to charity, you face the same challenge. The pattern requires undoing before you can earn forward motion.

When life interferes, new patterns are established. This is why it’s so profitable to market to new dads, engaged women, and people who have recently moved. They don’t have a pattern to match, so it’s all an interrupt. On the other hand, the purchasing manager at a typical organization has been taught that matching the pattern is the best way to keep a steady job with no surprises.

The best time to market a new app is when the platform is brand new.

When you market to someone who doesn’t have a pattern yet, you don’t have to persuade them that their old choices were mistakes.

Tension can change patterns

If you’re going to market a pattern interrupt, it will require you to provide the kind of tension that can only be released by being willing to change an ingrained pattern.

Tension is the force on a stretched rubber band. Pull it at one end and it creates tension at every point.

Why do some people hesitate to ask a question during a class, but will happily answer the professor if they’re called on?

Volunteering is a problem for them, because it requires agency and responsibility. But when the teacher applies focused social tension in the form of publicly calling on a student, that student has no problem answering. The tension was sufficient to overcome his or her inertia.

We create tension when we ask someone to contribute to the bake sale or join our book club. We’re using one force (in this case, social engagement) to overcome another force (the status quo).

For an example, let’s consider Slack, the fast-growing productivity software designed for teams at work. Very few people have a pattern of changing the way they work all day. No one wakes up in the morning hoping that they’ll need to learn a new software program and deal with the hassle for weeks as they shift from a trusted platform to a new one.

And yet Slack is the fastest-growing product of its kind. How?

Because after capturing the energy and affection of some neophiliacs, the ratchet kicked in. Using Slack is better when your coworkers use it. So, existing users have a powerful selfish reason to tell the others, and in fact, every day they don’t is painful for them.

And what about the pattern interrupt for the new user? Where’s the tension?

Simple: a colleague says, “You’re missing out.”

Every day you’re not on Slack, people at work are talking about you behind your back, working on projects without you, having conversations you’re excluded from.

You can release that tension, right now, simply by signing in . . .

Slack began by doing a pattern match, offering new software to people who like new software. A new way of doing work for people looking for a new way of doing work.

But then came the leap.

They gave this group a tool to create a pattern interrupt. Peer to peer. One worker saying to another, “We’re going to try this new tool.” That single horizontal transmission built a multi-billion-dollar software company.

It’s not accidental. It’s built into the software itself.

What pattern are you interrupting?

What are you breaking?

Launch a new project and, in addition to serving your audience, you’ll be breaking something. The very existence of an alternative causes something else to no longer be true.

When you launch the second hotel in Niagara Falls, the first hotel is no longer the one and only.

When you launch the telephone, the telegraph is no longer the fastest way to send a message.

When you host an exclusive party, the people who aren’t invited become outsiders.

When you launch an extreme (the most efficient, the least expensive, the most convenient), then whatever you’ve exceeded is no longer the extreme that its fans sought out.

When a new network begins to gain traction, bringing in the cool kids, the powerful early adopters, this traction causes everyone who was part of the old network you’re supplanting to reconsider their allegiance.

This is what tension feels like. The tension of being left behind.

And marketers who cause change cause tension.

Tension is not the same as fear

If you feel like you’re coercing people, manipulating them or causing them to be afraid, you’re probably doing it wrong.

But tension is different. Tension is something we can do precisely because we care about those we seek to serve.

Fear’s a dream killer. It puts people into suspended animation, holding their breath, paralyzed and unable to move forward.

Fear alone isn’t going to help you make change happen. Tension might, though.

The tension we face any time we’re about to cross a threshold. The tension of this might work versus this might not work. The tension of, “If I learn this, will I like who I become?” There might be fear, but tension is the promise that we can get through that fear to the other side.

Tension is the hallmark of a great educational experience—the tension of not quite knowing where we are in the process, not being sure of the curriculum, not having a guarantee that the insight we seek is about to happen.

All effective education creates tension, because just before you learn something, you’re aware you don’t know it (yet).

As adults, we willingly expose ourselves to the tension of a great jazz concert, or a baseball game, or a thrilling movie. But, mostly because we’ve been indoctrinated by fear, we hesitate when we have the opportunity to learn something new on our way to becoming the person we seek to be.

Fear will paralyze us if we haven’t been taught that forward motion is possible. Once we see a way out, the tension can be the tool that moves us.

Effective marketers have the courage to create tension. Some actively seek out this tension, because it works. It pushes those you serve over the chasm to the other side.

If you care enough about the change you seek to make, you will care enough to generously and respectfully create tension on behalf of that change.

Marketers create tension, and forward motion relieves that tension The logic of the going-out-of-business sale is elusive. After all, if the store was any good, it wouldn’t be going out of business. And if a customer is hoping for support, a warranty, or a chance for a return, buying something from a store that’s about to disappear isn’t very smart.

And yet, people can’t resist a bargain.

That’s because the scarcity of the going-out-of-business sale creates tension. The tension of “What bargains did I miss?” The best way to relieve that tension is to go to the store and check it out.

Of course, the fear of missing out on a bankruptcy isn’t the only tension that drives us forward.

Here’s a new social app. If you get in early, you’ll find more friends and be more in sync than the people who come later. Better not fall behind.

Here’s how we process the invoices here. I know you’re familiar with the original system, but our organization uses the new one, and you’ll need to be good at it by Thursday.

The last three houses that sold on our block went for less than anyone expected. If we don’t sell soon, we’ll never be able to cover our mortgage.

Supreme is only making 250 of these sneakers. I’m getting a pair—are you coming?

If you want to find out how the series ends, you’ll need to tune in on Sunday.

We don’t want to feel left out, left behind, uninformed, or impotent. We want to get ahead. We want to be in sync. We want to do what people like us are doing.

None of those feelings existed before a marketer showed up with something that caused them—if there weren’t a new album, you wouldn’t feel left out if you hadn’t heard it yet.

We intentionally create these gaps, these little canyons of tension that people find themselves leaping over.

And the reason is status.

Where do we stand?

What does the tribe think of us?

Who’s up, and who’s down?

Are you ready to create tension?

It’s not a rhetorical question.

There are two ways to do your work.

You can be a cab driver. Show up and ask someone where they want to go. Charge them based on the meter. Be a replaceable cog in the on-demand transport system. You might be a harder-working cabbie, but it won’t change much.

Or you can be an agent of change, someone who creates tension and then relieves it.

When they started building fancy casinos in Las Vegas, it created tension for countless travelers. Visitors who just a year earlier were happy in Reno or in downtown Las Vegas now felt like second-class citizens. They asked, “Am I the sort of person who goes to a casino this run-down?” The very existence of a fancier alternative degraded their experience at their former favorite.

Tension is created. And the only way to relieve that tension is with forward motion.

When you arrive on the scene with your story, with the solution you have in mind, do you also create tension? If you don’t, the status quo is likely to survive.

How the status quo got that way

The dominant narrative, the market share leader, the policies and procedures that rule the day—they all exist for a reason.

They’re good at resisting efforts by insurgents like you.

If all it took to upend the status quo was the truth, we would have changed a long time ago.

If all we were waiting for was a better idea, a simpler solution, or a more efficient procedure, we would have shifted away from the status quo a year or a decade or a century ago.

The status quo doesn’t shift because you’re right. It shifts because the culture changes.

And the engine of culture is status.