-David Campbell
Most people are non-compliant. They lack discipline even when they try. Over 80% of patients occasionally miss a dose. When asked to take a pill everyday, a doctor told me they assume patients will miss every 4th pill. Some doctors even bake this into their prescription. It’s difficult for those who are disciplined to fully comprehend the implications of this.
This is why operations is such a difficult job. You need standing operational procedures (SOPs) that are followed. And you need SOPs to follow when the original SOP isn’t complied to. When writing software, you want to assume that user actions are correct. But users make mistakes and need workflows to mitigate and deal with those mistakes. You may need to edit the original SOP to add extra hoops and warnings to mitigate mistakes. And you may purposely not spend time optimizing the workflows that fix mistakes. Accounting software is notorious for this as a single data entry can take weeks of work to reverse. The cost of messing up is so large that it encourages users to follow SOPs.
Only 37% of Americans have enough savings to cover a $500 expense. Think about what this means for how 63% of people operate day to day. Their decision making process (at least around spending and saving) is completely different from the people you interact with on a day to day basis. It takes empathy to relate to people different from us.
What we communicate has consequences. There are always tradeoffs in messages. In any business or marketing campaign, you get to choose your path. You can’t have it all.
Many can’t help eating unhealthy food. Others suffer from anorexia and bulimia. For the last few decades, America’s health crisis has been around obesity. Reducing obesity is one of the best ways to reduce healthcare costs in the US. But it’s not healthy to be too thin either. Our society recently decided to address women feeling insecure about their body weight to try and make a few skinny women eat more. Anorexia and bulimia are largely a problem in the most affluent of our society. But posts of women eating pizza and living their best life are everywhere.
The dark side of this is when society says being obese is healthy, it cascades to the rest of society. Actors and models are meant to be ideals to strive for. They aren’t supposed to be what most society actually is. Now, actors and models are starting to reflect society’s worst aspects. We’re losing the American dream of ideals to strive for. We’re normalizing mediocrity. When we lose our culture, we lose our society.
Many things made Rome great. But culturally what made Rome great was their ambition. It’s why they didn’t fall to Carthage during the Second Punic War. Any other country that lost a generation of men and had their land occupied by an army they couldn’t defeat, would have immediately surrendered. They never beat Hannibal’s army in Roman territory, but Rome still won because they persisted. They had ambition and drive that filled every Roman with a sense of purpose.
Children had play time in ancestor rooms. In the rooms were busts of all their deceased relatives. Under the busts, the major accomplishments of their lives were ingrained underneath. When playtime was over, mothers would ask their children “what’s going to be under your bust when you’re gone?” Imagine the society that molded.
One could argue that Rome should have surrendered to Carthage. It was non-compliant of them to sacrifice a generation of men simply for the idea of Rome. The culture of Rome wouldn’t allow it. It was built around persistence.
Incentives are the best way to wield influence. Incentives can be positive and negative. Shame for failure. Praise for success. Cultural awareness is nice but cultural incentives are better.