the-fu.com: ideas without borders: Cold Comfort

ideas without borders: Cold Comfort

As a child, I worried a lot. Between BBC news documentaries, parents who didn’t keep much behind closed doors, a near-fatal asthma attack and unchecked bullying in the playground - I had lost faith in the protective power of adults before my seventh birthday. As a result, my nights were mostly sleepless and my days a blur of wincing at school bell clangs and soaking in the rain at shelter-less bus-stops.

Interestingly though, this perpetual angst coincided with a prolific period of productivity. Notebooks, diaries and scrap paper covered in fiction and introspective commentary, lay neatly stacked beneath the bed I rarely slept in. I finished mathematics and science text books meant for the year, in 3 or 4 months, so often spent Spring and Summer terms learning new languages from library cassettes then writing in them, teaching myself the piano and guitar then composing songs , or drawing sunsets (albeit the same one over and over) with different materials. When I turned 15 I added part-time employment to the mix and at university I held down 3 jobs while studying for a double degree. And the flow of creative content never stopped; the by-product of a life spent on emotional tenterhooks, was a life’s worth of non-stop expressive output.

Then came luck in the form of a job at a world class advertising agency. Excitement followed when my lifetime dream of moving to New York, came true at 21. I surprised myself and all who knew me by making new friends quickly and firmly, which led to the blissful feeling of having finally found my place in the world. I stopped worrying. I got comfortable. And all extra-curricular creativity ground to a halt. At first I barely noticed, because my professional and personal lives were still fuller than those of my friends. But as I neared my 5th anniversary as a New Yorker, it gradually dawned on me – I missed the pride in spontaneous productivity that had defined my childhood. I had become an averagely content young professional. And it sucked.

Now, in many aspects I might be a special case, but there’s an underlying truth to my story which I’ve observed in other individuals and many of the brands I’ve worked with; Comfort has a dirty secret: it kills motivation. Think about it - if you’re happy where you are, you’re also less willing to change anything. Bliss blunts your sense of urgency and the goal becomes keeping things in the same comfortable state, so you stay put… and eventually stagnate.

Animals achieve their ongoing goal of survival, with the fight or flight response. Human beings are slightly more complex but if you consider the challenge of developing new skills to reach your goals, which is vital for professional survival, the same process applies. Another personal example: it’s typical for West Indian parents to enforce rules with a belt to the back of the legs every now and again. Now, I don’t condone this as a method of discipline, but I have to admit that avoiding the sting of the lash motivated me to achieve a number of feats of which I had initially thought myself incapable - from chasing down buses I’d drowsily left my school bag on, to scaling a 15 foot chain link fence to get home on time after a night of teenaged delinquency. In these instances fear made my heart quicken, my adrenaline pump and my brain flood with the focus required to formulate a cunning plan. There was no choice but to rise to the occasion – so I fought instead of fled, and won a largely pain-free existence because of it.

This may seem extreme, but according to Elizabeth Day, it illustrates exactly how the fight or flight response generates effective motivation in humans:

1. Programming creates beliefs (bad shit will happen if I don’t get it done)
   
2. Beliefs create attitudes (avoiding bad shit is the only way to be happy)
   
3. Attitudes create feelings (I really like being happy)
   
4. Feelings determine actions (I will be happy when I get it done)
   
5. Actions create results (it’s done, therefore I’m happy)
   
   So I wouldn’t have developed this reflex for converting panic into motivation, if my mother had been a more forgiving woman. Thankfully though, there is a far healthier way to replicate this process, beginning with the very first step: changing your programming. Build a very clear picture in your mind of what the “bad shit” will be and make sure it’s based on beliefs that hold true across most plausible situations in your daily experience. This way, whenever motivation is required to complete a task, the bad shit alternative will apply more often than not. Then really focus on the end result, specifically how profound the sensation of bliss will feel as a result of getting the task done. Swing a mental pendulum between the bad shit and the bliss a few times and, if you’re an otherwise well-adjusted human being, the momentum of said pendulum should convert into a healthy dose of motivation.
   
   This works at a company level too – but the culture in your workplace has to be based on beliefs that make sense to everyone. Similarly, the bad shit alternative should be clear and relevant to team members at all levels – the little (paycheck) people won’t care if their failure to hit targets only affects director level bonuses, and so forth. The bliss part is the most important part however; without a meaningful bond to the business, employees will happily walk away from bad shit unless there’s a large dose of bliss coming to them. Pervasive programming (for want of a phrase that sounds less creepy) like this, is invaluable when it comes to motivating your workforce.
   
   The brand level is where motivation is not so straightforward. Innovation requires recognition that it’s important keep moving forward and to not get too comfortable lest you slip backwards. In a booming economy the bad shit (loss of market share) seems far away and therefore far less scary; bliss blunts urgency and the goal becomes maintaining the status quo. When this happens, it takes a shocking dose of disruptive discomfort for brand managers to wake up and smell the stagnant pool of mediocrity, by which time it is often too late.
   
   Strangely, the same thing tends to happen when the economy isn’t doing too well, the rationale being that the status quo is probably better than risking a slip by offering consumers something new. It is then the critical role of the brand strategist to define and articulate the bad shit (sans belt) and the bliss – then hopefully illuminate a way forward that minimizes risk and maximizes differentiation.
   
   If you think this over-simplifies the matter, think of a situation where change is desperately needed but doesn’t seem to be happening for some reason – and I guarantee you will eventually find a case of either “bad shit denial” (e.g. the war in Iraq), “bliss blindness” (e.g. the 2004 US election) or, in the most tragic cases, both (e.g. America’s refusal to join the Kyoto protocol).
   
   The simple truth is that we don’t leap to greatness if the spot we’re in feels good enough – but the best way to fall behind is to stay where you are, so swing the pendulum; you’ll be surprised how much better discomfort can feel.
   
   
   

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