Free The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence by Steve J. Martin, Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini Page A

probably most important of all is the simple fact that incentives can be expensive to implement.
    However, research from behavioral science suggests that adding a single ingredient to the productivity recipe can improve the result and will do so at no cost. What’s more, all that’s required is one small change that will take just five easy minutes.
    Remember Adam Grant, the Wharton School of Business professor whom we mentioned in chapter 6? He believed that workers often fail to live up to their potential due to one fundamental ingredient that is missing: They’ve lost track of the significance and meaningfulness of their jobs. Grant figured that if employees could be reminded of why their jobs are important, they might become more highly motivated and, as a result, become more productive individuals.
    To test this idea, he set up a study in the call center of a university whose employees were tasked with contacting alumni and persuading them to make donations to the college’s scholarship funds. Grant first randomly divided the call center employees into three groups. Employees assigned to the first group read stories written by other employees that described what those employees perceived were the personal benefits of the job. Typically they would write about the financial package they received and the opportunities the job gave them for the development of their own personal skills and knowledge. Grant refers to this group as the “personal benefit” condition.
    However, another set of employees read stories written by students who had benefited from the organization’s fundraising activities. These were individuals who described how the scholarships they obtained had an enormously positive impact on their lives, giving them a way to achieve treasured goals and dreams that would have been otherwise unattainable. Grant refers to this group as the “task significance” condition.
    Finally, as a control condition, the last group of employees did not read any stories at all. Grant subsequently measured the number of pledges earned as well as the amount of donation money obtained by all the callers both one week prior to the study and one month afterward.
    What he found was simply amazing.
    Employees in the “personal benefit” and control conditions performed almost exactly the same after the intervention as they did before it both in terms of the amount of donation money they raised and the number of pledges they earned. Yet, those in the “task significance” condition earned more than twice the number of weekly pledges, going from an average of 9 to an average of 23. They also raised more than twice the amount of money, with average weekly donations growing from $1,288 a week to $3,130.
    So what was it about this particular approach that was driving such an incredible increase? Further analyses suggested that the increase was due primarily to the fact that previously unmotivated employees were being spurred on by recognizing their connection to the touching personal stories they read. Energized by these results, they were making more calls per hour, speaking to more people, and consequently collecting more donations.
    This insight provides a timely lesson for anyone tasked with motivating others. Regardless of whether the work concerns one’s role in a private corporation, the public sector, or a social enterprise, there is likely to be some significance and meaningfulness in nearly every job. The small change that managers would be advised to make is to take steps to ensure that their employees don’t lose sight of what that is.
    What are those steps? For businesses that don’t already routinely collect customer stories, testimonials, and reports about how an employee, product, or service has benefited them in a positive way, the advice is to start doing so now. For those that already do collect customer stories, perhaps displaying them publicly on bulletin and notice boards is another small change that