What I learned From TED: Become boring

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I am not sure that this is the most inspiring TED talk, but it made me think about what i am working on at the moment.

Chris Sauve says that boring people do 3 things:

  1. Write it down
  2. Reduce to essentials
  3. Stop and question

He takes the obvious route and mentions Steve Jobs wearing the same clothes every day, which meant one less decision for him to make so that he could focus on what matters.

And thats the point of Chris's talk - cut the crap and focus on what matters, otherwise you will miss out on what you love.

But he also spoke about George Miller's magic number of 7 plus or minus 2. This describes the limits of the typical persons cognition - how many things people can work with at once. This is where I took something away. And this made me think.

So how will this help me roll out my safety and wellbeing program?

We (let's say we is "HR") may tell our staff that there are 3 things to remember about safety: remove and report hazards, make sure your workstation is set up properly, and call the employee assistance program if you need a hand. That seems easy enough, surely.

However, don't forget that we also told them that they need to put their development plans in, that they need to update their employee details before the end of the financial year, that they need to fill in their employee satisfaction survey. And so on and so forth. And then there are demands from IT guys, from finance, from facilities, and of course not forgetting the customer!

If we want to change behaviour, we can't just sheep dip a message and assume it takes. People won't remember. Give people simple messages and repeat them often. Get important people to say them, like the CEO, or their leader, or the guy they always sit next to in the lunch room. 

Something like: 1) Be safe 2) if you don't know what safe is, look here.

Then make it simple and easy for there to search "here", which I assume is the company intranet. Its not about having all policies and checklists available on a page. Its about making it easy to access. 

This is us writing it down for people and reducing it down to the essentials. By making it simple for the employee, we are making it easier for people to create the habits that matter. 

If we use these boring techniques, we can help people change their behaviour.