← The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
The Brainy Business | Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy | Behavioral Economics
472. Achieving Hyper Performance
00:47:10
In this episode of The Brainy Business podcast, Melina Palmer is joined by Dr. Agnis Stibe, a renowned expert in behavioral economics and transformation design, to explore the concept of hyper performance. Agnis shares insights from his work,...
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- [00:00]
Melina Palmer
Welcome to episode 472 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about achieving hyper performance with Dr. Agnes Stieb.
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Dr. Agnes Stieb
Ready?
- [00:13]
Melina Palmer
Let's get started.
- [00:18]
Malik Melina Palmer
You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Malik Melina Palmer hello.
- [00:35]
Melina Palmer
Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. One of my favorite case studies to share is of a company called the literary. Their CEO joined me on the podcast way back in episode 75 and talked about the way they used behavioral economics to reframe the problem of getting people to properly throw away and sort their garbage by looking at motivation and incentives differently and inventing smart garbage cans that have allowed them to turn litter into lottery tickets. It's an amazing story and one that My guest today, Dr. Agnes Stieb, was a big part of in the behavioral aspects that went into that company. He will be talking about that work and many other amazing things he does in our conversation today which originally aired back in June of 2022. He's a fascinating person with some really great case stud. I can't wait to share them with you. Don't forget, links for my top related past episodes and books are waiting for you in the show notes for this episode which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 472 all right, let's jump right in. Dr. Agnes Stieb, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
- [01:53]
Malik Melina Palmer
Happy to be here. Let's see you again.
- [01:56]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Absolutely. Always delighted to see and chat with you. And for everyone who is not yet familiar with you and your amazing work, can you share a little bit of your background and the work that you do?
- [02:09]
Malik Melina Palmer
I'm really passionate about helping people, teams, organizations and societies to get where they want to get and usually they want to get to a higher level of satisfaction, whether through the well being of society or that's through the performance in organization or just individuals to boosting their self esteem. So how to get there? I think it's good to combine the resources of technology that we currently are developing, especially the most promising one, artificial intelligence, and craft that with the understanding of how humans are and how humans can change, or more specifically how humans are not willing to change and instruct artificial intelligence to help us to get where we want to get. So I label it as hyper Performance. And what do I mean by that is not by adding more skills, practice or knowledge, but removing the obstacles from human thinking. It's our counterproductive psychology that is oftentimes the roadblock to our own success and happiness at individual, at societal and also organizational levels. And I'm doing research on that. I'm teaching subjects related to that. I also give keynotes and also master classes for organizations to help embrace that perspective. Because unfortunately, the history tells and the habits are in, especially in organizations. Oh, people are not performing very well. Our KPIs are quite low. Maybe we should send to the trainings. After trainings, there will be different people. Now, my good friend from when I worked at Hewlett Packard said, you know, a fool with a tool is still a fool. So I took that perspective and I tried to kind of tailor it from the perspective. If there is a bias in employees or presidents or individuals somewhere, the bias is still there no matter how well you train the person. So that's kind of the comparison between increased performance and hyper performance that I'm really passionate about. So that's my journey.
- [04:18]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
And with that where you say, you know, the fool with a tool is still a fool. Right. And I believe what I'm hearing and what you're saying there is like, even though, even when we know about the biases, we can't fully eliminate them. It's not like we say, oh, I'm not, I'm not going to stereotype this way anymore. I'm not going to have confirmation bias be a thing for me.
- [04:42]
Melina Palmer
Right.
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Dr. Agnes Stieb
We don't get to just turn that off when we're aware of them, unfortunately. So what sort of tips and things do you incorporate into the work that you're doing to help people be a little less of a fool with their tools?
- [04:56]
Malik Melina Palmer
Okay. It's kind of interesting to have like a very simplified version of it that I expressed that a friend of mine told me many years ago. But of course, we also kind of need to move away from it gradually in our conversation. Answering your question, obviously if there is no awareness of a bias, so the bias doesn't exist. Therefore, people just have a feeling like everything is fine, nothing's wrong with it. And then the next step is how the awareness can arrive to a person is either the person arrived to that awareness himself or herself, or somebody says, and somebody can be a human being and somebody can be a technology. And when that awareness arrives from external sources, then it's also a question of credibility and as a question of whether somebody wants to Rule my life and suggest what's the better way of living? And all of these other ways how people experience. Number one, resistance. Number two, denial. And those are the typical trajectories where people can find themselves. So therefore, number one, awareness. It's just like with everything. Like we can look at the addictions, for example, people are addicted and they in denial. So nothing will really help. Awareness, number one. And then once the awareness is there, there has to be a degree of willingness, willingness to be aware. So what I usually say, and that starts with a young age speaking with the kids, and then it goes up to the students and up to the adults, is, do you want to. That's kind of a very trivial, but at the same time, the key essential question, do you want to. Do you want to be aware? And then after, if you want to be aware, do you want to do anything about it? And from my work, there is a tool which I call circles. And people can fall into three circles, the green, yellow and red. So, and if people say, I know it, but I don't want to do anything about it, and then green people are, they know what they want and they do it. And then quite many people fall into the middle circle, which I call January 1st. So people kind of want to change their lives, but not always are following up with the choices and behaviors and decisions.
- [07:08]
Melina Palmer
Yes.
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Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yeah, definitely. And I had. I did. Episode 198 of the podcast was on the Dunning Kruger effect, which was so. I've always loved that concept myself. And it was something that ended up being so popular beyond what I was even expecting, as people became. They got Dunning Kruger on the Dunning Kruger effect itself, which for anyone who hasn't listened to that yet, that is essentially that competence and confidence have kind of this strange relationship that when you don't know things yet, when you don't know all of what you don't know, you're at the peak of Mount Stupid, as is said in kind of the fun industry term there, where you're super confident, even though you don't know anything about what you're talking about. And then as you get a little bit more competent, your confidence tanks. And then you have to slowly kind of work your way back up out of the valley of despair on there. And like you said, that awareness point, the knowing what you don't know is so important, you have to then decide. I talked about in the episode, not everything is worth coming up the slope of enlightenment. As they talk about in that kind of chart there, there are some Things where you can just accept, wow, there's a lot of. There's a lot more to this than I thought and it's not worth it for me. Like, it's. So while the red is bad in a lot of ways that you should maybe advance, in some cases, it's okay, I think, to just sort of accept that this is part of what I've got going on and it's not worth my time so I can focus on these other things that really are important and that I want to change.
- [08:52]
Malik Melina Palmer
Right. And maybe we should give the listeners more of a simplified vocabulary. Meanwhile, while we're kind of touching upon like a deep science is explaining how the humans change or can't change for sure. I think the everyday word for that is curiosity. I think that's kind of. We look at the kids, they're curious, okay, let's try this. And that we are having the same access to the same curiosity throughout our lives. And it's just a question. Do we allow ourselves to be using it? Therefore, simplifying the awareness is curiosity. Are you curious? Are you curious that everything is kind of in alignment in your life? And if a question arrives to you that says, well, are you happy with what you do at work? Or are you happy with how you spend your morning time? Are you happy? How is your relationship with technology? Those questions usually come with an unimplied answer. And this is how I shifted from the industry successful jobs, working at the Hewlett Packard and Oracle and doing customer relationships, having nice business cards and trips and so forth into my scientific endeavor. And it was really about, okay, I was curious. So if the question arrives to me, having all this kind of benefits from the industry work and the question was very straightforward, then I might assume many listeners have the same question. Am I happy? Yeah.
- [10:16]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yes. And I am all about questions. As the audience knows, I recently had Warren Berger on the show who wrote my favorite book, A More Beautiful Questions. So for anyone who wants to think more about great questioning, highly recommend. That one was episode 200. And so you've talked a bit about AI and you know the role of technology. And I know that is something that people are asking about a lot right now about how AI and machine learning ties in with the behavioral sciences. What are your thoughts? Well, what are your, I guess, simplified, like for the podcast thoughts? Because I know, as you said, you have many, many that would take much longer than the time you're willing to give us today.
- [11:01]
Malik Melina Palmer
I have a lot to say about this topic. Let me give you the kind of key essential takeaways or key essential perspectives. So if the question is about the power of technology, assuming the AI is the most promising, the artificial intelligence. So number one, I would really encourage people to take away unnecessary bias towards artificial intelligence. Before we start the conversation of the use of AI for our behavioral changes on a different scale, number one, I want to give you a perspective where humans, long, long time ago, our ancestors many thousands of years ago, were trying to figure out how we can be more intelligent as a species. So of course, first of all, we survived because of the collaboration. The next was how can we collaborate more efficiently? Okay, let's invent speaking language and stuff after that. Okay. It's not so efficient. We need to kind of speak to each other. So maybe let's write down so everybody can read it. Okay. That makes life easier. The next is, oh, I need to rewrite it all the time, so maybe even printing. Nice scaling up. Next. Oh, it's accumulating in one place, libraries. That's great. The next thing is, oh, digital. Digital is great. So let's have more access from different locations and we can share it. Wonderful. And the next is the emergence of technology not only as the accumulator, as the place to share and do many other things, but as the intelligence itself. Looking at our human intelligence, revising it, finding new patterns into our knowledge, for example, or bringing pieces together in innovative ways. And I see this just another contributor, intelligent machine driven intelligence contributing to co evolving united intelligence. That's the paradigm I was developing in my mind and I'm sharing this with people and I'm like, okay, that makes sense. Number one, we are together with it on our journey and the only obstacles are our human biases or our human dark sides leveraging the tools against ourselves or against the other human beings. Now moving from that understanding that artificial intelligence is technology driven intelligence that helps humans to achieve their goals, then we can look at behavioral science specifically for this podcast here. Wonderful use for the AI. AI looking at data and trying and giving more deeper insights into behavioral patterns. We can start with organizational processes, how people make decisions, when and how to deal with their technology. Everything is in a log file, so you can look at that, so everything is registered. From there they can make better analysis, visual representations and also suggestions for decision making. So those are the most common uses of the AI for addressing human behavior change at different scales.
- [14:03]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yeah. Do you have any projects or anything you're able to share to kind of show practically how you've used this? I know that many things cannot be Shared. So if you don't have anything, totally understand.
- [14:19]
Malik Melina Palmer
There are, there are success stories and one of the famous ones are addressing the famous example is where real life problem in organizations and in many other occasions where people have agreed to come and meet and discuss and agree on certain things like project meetings and organizational meetings. And we know, I think everyone on this podcast who is listening has been a situation when somebody arrives late, late to the meeting. And that was a real case really implementation, we simplified it again simplifying to test that the proof of concept works. There was a computer in the meeting room. There was a bigger TV or the screen, which usually the conference rooms have a TV where you can present the PowerPoint and stuff. And that was all connected in a sense that when every person arrived to the meeting, whether you were on time or late, was giving you the color of the meeting for the representation of your performance on that visual on the screen. So if you were on time, you got the color of that meeting. If you were late, you didn't get the color of that meeting. And everyone was able to see their own performance across the last meetings. And then you could also see how others are performing again, staying away from the conventional carrots and sticks, punishments and rewards. It was purely based on the social influence, how we inherently are reacting to other people. In this case, technology did only one thing, made the whole process transparent and accumulated over time, you will be able to see who is getting more colors in their bars and who are not. And lacking behind after five meetings, everyone was on time. Every single person was on time. It took five meetings. And of course we can imagine if that design strategy was to grow those bars depending on next meetings. And you are either getting more colors in your bar or you are not. After the three, four or five meetings, you see, well, there are people having like five colors and you have none. So you don't want that and you want to escape that. So that was one of the most vivid ways and at the same time addressing one of the most common human biases that people would be just saying, oh, it's not that important to be on time, or it's pointless to be on time. I will have other, other meetings. More important, I have to take this call, I have to answer this email and goes on and on.
- [16:51]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
I love this example, as you know. And when we talked about it, it's been a few months now since we first talked about it. And I said, oh, that one's going in the book, right? So my second book is on how what your employees need and can't tell you it's all about change management. And I love this example of the. How the social proof makes it to where you feel that pressure to be on time. And what's really fascinating about this example, I think, is everyone can see if you're on time or not. Everybody knows anyway. So why does the chart have any impact at all? Right? Everybody should know that I was late for the last four meetings. I know I was late for the last four meetings. So why do I care about the chart? Why does seeing it make a difference? And for everyone, for when the book comes out, Agnes was kind enough to provide some imagery that should be included in there so you can actually see, you know, how that looks. What sort of insight do you have into kind of that aspect of it is such a funny quirk. But. But we can all feel that too, right? Where you would look at that chart and say, oh man, I hope my company never does something like that. But why? Right? It's so strange. I love it.
- [18:14]
Malik Melina Palmer
Strange is to face our own human nature at its core or at its depth. And that's the most interesting, at least for me. Many people would like to deny and not go that way at all, but I'm different. That's my most desirable. How can I understand how the things work deep down in our neurology, physiology, psychology, sociology, and how it all can be intertwined with technology design so that these technologies actually make the transformation work in a long term? Here it is. There are two ways how to look at this. Let me start with the one that would be possibly popping into the minds of the listeners. Oh, I don't want this. I don't want to see myself. I don't want to see myself in comparison with others on the same screen. I don't want that. You see, that's the denial and the resistance speaking. What they usually put up as an argument, they say that's public shaming. That's the most common way how the people would be reacting. In my talks or in the master classes, there is always somebody bringing up this idea. And I said, well, let's take a closer look to this. What's the role of technology in this experience? Similarly, as you said, if you sit in a meeting room without this solution, you would be able to see who is coming late. And if you want, you can write it down on your paper. And it's kind of the basic idea of the same thing, like a paper based solution. And now it's just more digitized because we have technologies that can do it for us, by the way, the next thing is AI with a camera seeing who is coming in and doing it all for us. So that's how it's accelerating or amplifying the effect. Number one, to take away the argument of public shaming is such a response where technology is just doing the same thing that we already can do is just do it more efficiently so we don't need to pay attention that much. And why it feels so different is because our brains are very efficient at filtering what's useful and what's not. So therefore, if you have seen a person not being on time or being late for the last meeting, but that was maybe an occasion, it's not so valuable information. So it's erased and that repeats for quite some time. And there is a person always being late, of course that's kind of valuable information. And we start to remember who is the person or who are the people coming late. So therefore technology is taking away number one, the bias because everyone can remember, okay, that person was late or that person wasn't, but it's inaccurate. Our brains are good but not perfect. So technology number one is having a more reliable perspective on the behavioral performances of the people. And secondly, it makes existing patterns just more transparent and more visible so that we as collective look at the representation and we are not stuck into debating our subjective perspectives. So those are the major reasons on the one hand, what people are resisting and kind of expressing their not willingness to have them. On the other hand, what are the real benefits and what are the real improvements that the companies can get by implementing these solutions, Taking away these human driven biases.
- [21:49]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for digging in on that. Like I said, it's one of my favorite examples, another of my favorite examples that I talk about all the time when it's kind of a key one when I talk about change is the literary, which I love. And you were pretty heavily involved in that. I don't think project is the right thing to say. Company the that movement. Yeah. What can you share about And I'll link, of course. There's an episode where I talk to Michael, the CEO about the literary in episode 75, which I know because I talk about it all the time, like I said and I'm always sharing about it. What role did you play? What can you share about the literary project?
- [22:40]
Malik Melina Palmer
Number one, the literary is the concept and startup and idea and the business model, how our societies can get more cleaner and our governance for the local municipality more efficient and taking care of our surroundings to be not crowded with garbage or waste around. The basic promise that also Michael says is before there were humans on earth, there is no litter. So it's a man made behavioral problem. And this all starts there. What attracted me to this idea was regardless of how brilliant technology can be developed so these smart little vents, recognizing what kind of leader it is, plastic, metal, glass, et cetera, and giving a lottery ticket. If you have sorted and put your leader, the appropriate leader, in a proper leader bin, that's all fine. The angle that I was really passionate to add to this project was well, yes, you are using and leveraging the lottery idea, which is gaining something and anticipating that you might be the winner. That's kind of our optimism bias a little bit. It's all fine. And we know lotteries have been around for 4,000 years and they work in a specific way. And I said, well, it's great, let's do it, but let's advance it to the next level where not only the people are engaged and attracted by the lottery concept alone. Let's add the social influence to that. Let's add the perspective of other people. For example, if you have a neighborhood and a few neighborhoods in the city, and then depends how well the people are sorting their leader and putting the right bands, we could quantify that and this is what the work that I did at MIT Media Lab, the quantifying communities, then we could, we would be able to compare these communities on the screens next to the bins or the bins themselves would be telling you whether you performed well or not, depending what you put in. But also what was the behavior of previous people that were throwing something into this bin. And that bin would be having this endless, not really endless, but continuous feedback loop about the behavior of your choice about the other people around this bin and then around the neighborhood and then comparing to other neighborhoods. And this is the way how we are amplifying the effects of success for that kind of solution just by adding this social layer to it. Because otherwise people, if they are left alone, okay, they are just sitting and hoping, okay, am I going to win or not? But then you see it's not only about winning or losing, it's about we. We as a collector, do we want to live in the kind of cleaner community? Do we have the engagement People desire to change many things in their lives. Not only individual, but on the collective level. What have we done wrong? Maybe not wrong, but kind of what is our current architecture in the cities it's non transparent, but technologies comes in and technologies come and Help us to make it again more transparent like 2000 years ago. Looking out to the fields, you can see some people are hunting, some people are digging ground, some people are doing something else. Our cities now are regaining and gaining back that and giving the possibility for people to benefit from seeing others, especially the good performers. That's always important.
- [26:24]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yeah, I really like that. And we haven't talked about that before, so thank you for sharing that. And it's very reminiscent, I guess or I like how it goes kind of beyond just social proof to. So Cialdini, you know, he's got his now seven principles of persuasion and was on the podcast talking about unity, that unity principle. And I think that that's really present there in the being part of something bigger and we're all on one team, working together and being able to help reinforce the community and something so simple. But that can have really lasting and compounding effects for the better by just a tiny little ad that can really change everything. Which is what it's all about, right?
- [27:16]
Malik Melina Palmer
Unfortunately, we humans over our evolution we have gained a lot and we have lost some essential awareness of who we are. And therefore also we have this debate about AI being different from us, which is wrong in many aspects. And also the way that they against us seeing the differences and all the characteristics of the people that is driven by one of the social influence principles, social comparison. We compare everything every time depends on the cultures that could be more of stronger effects of social comparison. Some of the cultures may be less generally what it means. It's. If you look back to how you thought about the grades in your high school, you look at how well did you perform comparing to your classmates and then you were specifically looking oh, I never knew I would perform less than this other person. Never expected him to perform that. That's social comparison. It has multiple angles. So here, by the way, how our societies have evolved and of course huge impact is by technological advancements, radio, television, mass communication, media, social media and so forth. And it's again depends how it was designed and how it was used again by other human beings to shift our society and our societal thinking. But there is a good news. We are coming back to our basis of our human nature. We more and more see that people want to choose healthier lifestyles, they want to live in a safer communities, they want to get together so that they improve their quality of life. And not only as individuals in societies, but also as entrepreneurs, as companies, the products and services. And all this paycheck to the earth idea on the balance sheet okay, what is the impact? So therefore I see a good trend. While the dark side of human nature, I'm not saying we should get rid of it. I think we cannot. DNA is just remembering all the dark ages that we went through as a human nature. But now, thanks to technology, we get more, deeper and clearer, more detailed perspective of who we are. If we use our intellectual capacity to say to ourselves, well, the dark sides come from the dark ages and we would like to leave them there. And we will use the positive and the beneficial ones for today, and we will leverage technologies for our own benefit collectively and not for making any unnecessary tensions between groups of people or countries or perspectives and so forth forth. So I see it's. And also thanks to the scholars like Cialdini and others who have done great contribution to helping people to realize how the things work on this intercommunication level and then also giving that as insightful tools for technology designers. So Cialdini is one BJ Fogg, and there are many other scholars and scientists who have done great help, especially remembering the BJ Fogg from Stanford University. He runs his behavioral design lab right now and he wrote the book persuasive technology almost 20 years ago. And I think that was really, really good boost for the whole community that currently is. Ah yes, technology can help us. Not only we persuade each other, technology can be designed for behavioral, positive behavioral changes.
- [30:54]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Yeah. And when you were talking, I was realizing, remembering, thinking about. So I did a series really early on on the podcast that I called all the Biases and I broke them into different categories like the way we think about ourselves, the way we think about others, things to do with memory, just kind of putting them into some sort of categories to help make sense of many, many biases there. But through all more than 200 episodes now. And even though we've talked about AI and things like that, haven't really had anyone talk much about the research and what people have found about our biases toward technology and knowing like we know that, you know, a co worker is a machine versus a person, or if we're playing games against a computer versus a person, how we feel differently about that and where we have this really interesting connection to technology, I guess, where it's this very polarized relationships, we. We really love it until we don't and then we really, really hate and fear it. Can you give any insight into some of that? For people that haven't read any of that research or heard much about it yet, I think it's fascinating.
- [32:08]
Malik Melina Palmer
It is. It definitely Is technologies have huge impact and it is such a multifaceted and multidimensional experience ever since the first initial digital technology. Before that we had a regular mechanical technology and we have mix of technical, electrical, all the software, all these technologies are now impacting the way how we experience the bias towards technology. I wouldn't there is, there is such a thing, that's for sure. That's how we experience it. And I agree with the ways how you describe. So we start with okay, we look for hope and help and making our life more comfortable and enjoy that until we find something that we don't like about it. Maybe it's a question of reliability or maybe that's a high expectations we had that this technology should deliver and work 100% of the time. Nevertheless, it's important to realize that most likely and I will make a hypothesis here because that's not the core of my work. But this is a very neighboring area so I can, I can give a educated guess or what we scientists call hypothesis. Technology is perceived by an average human being the same way as an average human being perceives another human being. So we look for trust and we call it reliability. We look for consistency, which means the level of accessibility to technology. Then we look for long term relationship. Okay, how many times did we have good experience with it and how many times there was a breakup with technology. So all of these and more and much more is coming through. I would even dare to say through the way how we are trying to impose our human characteristics and values on any non human objects or experiences with the non human events. The same way how we see a face on the moon. The same way when we see cats in the clouds. And why? Because it was essential for our survival. If we walked through the forest many thousand years ago, we better kind of read the other human beings. And the faces, are they friendly or not? Are they telling us the truth or not? The same we expect from technology. And that's why it's not always trivial. And especially when we think about humanoid robots. Yes, we would on the one hand see similarity with the other human beings and then would expect for example emotional intelligence. But they are still working on that. And when the robot makes the first mistake with disqualified immediately. And the takeaway here is technology is a tool, we are developing it. Our intentions are behind whether it's good or bad, ethical or unethical. So everything we experience with technology is giving us opportunity to look at ourselves. And the more advanced technology we develop, the closer and deeper we see ourselves in the whole spectrum of our bad and good, bright and dark sides of the human nature. And that's going to continue. And that's going to continue. And if you have this awareness, then we also are aware of the biases towards technology because they pretty much should be the same biases we have against other people, against other nations, against different other things that we would naturally do without technology. So it should be the same game just applied to another actor which is technology driven.
- [36:00]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Awesome. Thank you for taking that little side path with me. I appreciate it. I would be remiss if we did not talk about the STIB method for hyper performance before you go, because you know it has your name, so you should share a little bit about what it is and how you use that to help people in companies.
- [36:24]
Malik Melina Palmer
For a long time I was labeling it as a transformation design methodology on different other words that were attached as it was emerging from a deep scientific understanding of the human change and then refining how the changes are different and then getting to a way to investigating where's the problem and then applying technology so that technology can help us to deal with that problem more consistent way. So that was the journey. It all started by my question like question to myself which I mentioned earlier in the podcast, am I happy? And I said no, I'm not really. So I went to investigate what is the possibility to merge, to intertwine, to blend technology intelligence with the human intelligence for our own benefit. And this is how over the years I arrived to STIBA method and STIBE method implies and there are three major stages. There are 10 tools and they are split into three stages. So the first two tools fall into the guidance phase. So we kind of look for what is the best way for us to help ourselves. And the guidance tools have to not only specify where we want to get which I call the green vector and at the same time it helps to map out the ways that we don't want to go. By the way in the management, for example, oftentimes people have or the companies have vision and mission, but do they have the map around that area where they get the traps of the previous habits and people leading to the previous poor decisions that they've done before. Unlike until they don't have these other traps or the map of the traps, they just will fall into them without even knowing that. So therefore the first step is guidance and there are two tools. One is the pathology of change, understanding between the one time period of time and the long term changes which are transaction, transition, transformation then is a vector. All there's A green vector that should be yellow vectors and the red vectors and mapping out what are the likelihood you are actually constantly sticking with your desired direction. That means the green vector. And after that starts the framework, the framework of eight tools. And there are actually there are three phases. The first phase is investigation phase with four tools. Most of the times the problem with failed solutions are that there is not enough awareness where really is the problem. So therefore four tools go to investigate, investigate, investigate psychologically investigate and find out that the most the problems reside in human thinking. Most of the biggest challenges for performance and especially for hyper performance are the human biases, poor decisions, counterproductive thinking and all of those sorts of things. Once that's realized, we can start designing and using technology, then we have design phase. Design phase fundamentally is data driven with intelligence to analyze this data and then which is essential, which is the top layer of the architecture, which comes after the big buzz around smart cities and so forth, is a transforming layer. How we communicate this information, relevant information, back to our primary target audience, the end users. And this is where I really emphasize, and cannot emphasize more instant feedback loops. Instant feedback loops means if you receive your electricity bill next month, it doesn't really have any instant reflection or it doesn't give you the time to do that. But if you have every single time you switch on the lamp at home or you switch it off, you see something like a colors of the light, the ambient light changes, it gives you the instant feedback that's essential for designing. And the other component is social influence. Means you integrate into that instant feedback loop about other positive behaviors. People in your building switching off the lights, saving the energy for example, or consuming less than the previous month that encourages you to follow or get the inspiration. And the final phase, the crucial phase is to make like assurance for a long term success. And there are two tools. One is how you can avoid the times when everybody is just switching all their lights on and just burning down the energy. And that would naturally the social influence is working with the same power both ends. And you don't want your system to promote the opposite behavior just for the I don't know, because there is a celebration going on or something like this. So that's one. And the final one is ethics. So we need to be very aware that it's not the technology that is willing to do bad. It's how we are on the one hand sometimes having bad intentions. Some people might have bad intentions using the same tool. And the other one is something from our psychology. We can predict many of Behavioral aspects. But there are some unpredictability. So we cannot predict that there will be some emergence of the subgroup of the people would say, oh, this is how you do it. Do you light up the buildings during the night? Depends how the average consumption of the residents of the building was comparing to the previous week. This is how you do it. So I will rebel and I will switch all my lights just to kind of not allow you to look up my building. I will destroy our building's performance just because I don't like the solution that you have implemented. So that's shortly the overview of the method.
- [41:44]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Awesome. And I know where you were talking about some of the like vectors and aspects and color things there. We will be linking to some articles and to your website that has more information for people that you are now intrigued and you want to go take a look and really see what he's talking about. We'll definitely have the link there because as with anything, those visuals do help us to kind of get a feel for what's there. And clearly, you know, like you said, there are 10 aspects there. There's a lot going on in this model. It's very, very useful and helpful to have that sort of cheat sheet that you can go to for sure. So as I said, definitely linking to that. And for everyone that is now so excited to go learn more about what you do and connect with you. Watch your TED talk. TED Talks. I'm not, I'm not sure there's multiple. I believe.
- [42:40]
Malik Melina Palmer
Yes.
- [42:40]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Where are the best places to go to connect and learn more about you.
- [42:45]
Malik Melina Palmer
So if you are the person who is more in the preference of entertainment, you're welcome to my YouTube channel. There are like short videos explaining some of the things and some are more personal development related, some of the organizational, some explain the method. So that's kind of a place I think it's very appropriate for the times that many people are learning through watching the videos and again what's good about it. Videos are like usually containing other person telling you which is a social influence and it's at its core. So that's one. But if you are more serious, if you really want to dig deeper, then you're welcome to my website, which is my name surname dot com. And then you have the scientific literature behind that. We have the cases, success stories. You can have some interesting collections of the videos that I have. If you don't want to just browse the YouTube, you can have like a more specifically tailored way of the content related with my work.
- [43:44]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Wonderful. And you know right there. For anyone who is excited to have Agnes come do a talk for your company or you know, you want to have more information, you know there are links there for more information. You can, you know, schedule a call to talk with him about coming in to speak to your group. Whatever it is that you're looking for, I say definitely check it out and there will be links in those show notes waiting for you. So thank you again, Dr. Stibe for joining me on the show. I always learned something chatting with you and I'm sure everyone listening learned lots of things today as well.
- [44:20]
Malik Melina Palmer
My pleasure. Always welcome. See you next time.
- [44:23]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Sounds good.
- [44:26]
Melina Palmer
So what got your brain buzzing as you learned from Agnes today? For me, while the literary is a.
- [44:32]
Dr. Agnes Stieb
Big piece of what I always associate.
- [44:34]
Melina Palmer
With him, I also love the example of social proof to help get people to show up on time to meetings. This little somewhat counterintuitive nudge is so powerful and a great example of reframing a problem to change behavior. It is so often our tendency to be too myopic when looking to solve a problem. You look right at what you think the problem is and jump into trying to solve it instead of stepping back and asking thoughtful questions to see what might be hiding on the periphery. What's something we could do just before or adjacent to the problem that we're seeing now that might have more influence on the behavior we're trying to change? Those questions can lead to such amazing insights and true behavior change, which is fantastic. And of course, Agnes's work in achieving Hyper Performance is why I refreshed this episode today. It felt like the perfect primer for the conversation that's airing in just a couple days with Barry Conchi and Sarah Dalton discussing the five talents that really matter. How Great Leaders drive Extraordinary Performance. Now that your brain is working on this idea of hyper performance at work, you will be set up to understand these five key talents that matter, which Barry and Sarah evaluated over 58, 000 executives to unlock and share. It's super fascinating stuff and I know you don't want to miss that episode. If you aren't already subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now is a great time to do so to ensure you don't miss that or any other episode as we close out the show. Don't forget about those show notes with links to my top related past episodes and books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and atthebrainybusiness.com 472 and thank you again to Dr. Agnes Steep for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Friday for for a brand new episode with Barry Conchi and Sarah Dalton, co authors of the Five Talents that really Matter. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
- [46:53]
Malik Melina Palmer
Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.