Latitudes of Acceptance: Persuasion, bubbles and beliefs

The website Edge.org is a great place to find stimulating ideas. The project brings together great minds to ponder deep questions. A recent interview with Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA professor of psychology, caught my eye. Lieberman is the author of Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect.

In the Edge interview Lieberman explains the social psychology of persuasion. The basic premise is that, If I want to persuade you, what I need to do is pitch my arguments so that they're in the range of a bubble around your current belief.

Leiberman has found that brain regions involved in successful persuasion are those connected to social thinking, which is more about identity than rational analysis. For an idea to stick you need to be able to “try on” the identity that it suggests. For example, if you want people to quit smoking, they need to be able to see themselves as a non-smoker.

It's no different in workplace transformation: People need to be able to see themselves in the new space. If the notion of mobile- or collaborative-worker falls outside the bubble of decision-makers' self-image, then they won't be able to see those workplace options at all.  

As a consultant, I’m sometimes surprised by short-sighted decisions clients make about workplace opportunities. Occasionally, it even seems like decision-makers dismiss rational arguments in order to protect the status quo or even their own narrow interests. It never occurred to me that rich possibilities might be truly incomprehensible because they fall outside a social self-image, on the other side of the “latitude of acceptance.” To help promote positive transitions that make the workplace more productive, we need to start within the bubble of current beliefs. 

How Beauty Works and Why It Matters in the Workplace

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. (Wikipedia)

photo: Nick West

Beauty makes people feel good. That’s a great thing. Even if we don't agree on a specific features or characteristics we can still talk about the effect. 

Here’s my theory: Beauty is a state in which there are no evident distractions or problems, combined with some elevating quality. It’s a harmonious balance in which nothing stands out to be removed, added, or changed. A state of beauty allows me to relax and focus. It’s the perfect backdrop for productivity; non-intrusive but stimulating.

Compare that with Familiarity, which can yield some of the same benefits; it’s relaxing, safe, and non-distracting. But it misses the best effects – the stimulation and psychological lift. If the workplace doesn’t deliver that special benefit, there’s one more reason for your best employees to find other places to work.

The Efficiency Myth: How to Calculate the Real ROI for Workplace Change

Over the last generation of office design, technology has made everything smaller; equipment, desk surface area, filing, storage, mail and copy rooms, and so on. It seems like a no-brainer to reduce total office square footage.

But resistance to change in office design remains powerful. Many employees like the familiarity and symbolism of traditional layouts, even if it's inefficient. The battle between rational arguments for space reduction and emotional arguments to protect the status quo can be fraught.

Still, it's easy to make a compelling financial case. And its pretty obvious that 20% of office space is not needed for its former use. Wouldn’t you want to be the hero who takes those savings into the C-suite?

Not so fast. 

The cost of payroll is about 10x the cost of real estate. (Office space costs around $6000 per person per year for a company with average salary and benefits of $60K.) If disruption or disgruntlement cause a drop in productivity of just 2%, ALL the real estate savings are wiped out, and then some! Do the math. The table below shows the details for a proposed 20% reduction in real estate and corresponding 2% reduction in realized annual revenue. The result is a $112,500 net loss rather than a $187,500 gain from real estate cost savings.

So be careful in how you approach efficiency initiatives. Productivity losses can offset gains from real estate savings. We’ll talk in a future blog about promoting productivity rather than efficiency as a way to move this conversation forward.