Selfish, Scared and Stupid

Stop Fighting Human Nature And Increase Your Performance, Engagement And Influence

Kieran Flanagan, Dan Gregory

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780730312796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Successo personale

Appealing to humans' basic instincts to increase influence, buy-in and results

Survival of the species comes down to three basic instincts, say behavioural research strategists Dan Gregory and Kieran Flanagan—fear, self-interest and simplicity. These basic human behaviours come into play in all types of relationships, including those between businesses and customers. Selfish, Scared and Stupid: Stop fighting human nature and increase your performance, engagement and influence, demystifies these behaviours and examines the psychology behind why even the best ideas sometimes fail.

This book helps businesses design their organisations for reality rather than perfection, and also offers strategies to head off unprecedented levels of disengagement within, and outside, the business. It answers baffling questions around why the public sometimes fails to engage despite overwhelming data suggesting otherwise, why so many new products end up on clearance shelves and why so many great salespeople often fall short of their monthly targets.

• Learn how the survival of the species plays into business, including delusionary realities and the reasons ideas can fail
• Discover how to offer customers strategic rewards, thereby making the buying process more attractive to selfish natures
• Examine the link between fear and the unknown, including strategies for quelling fears and turning them into action
• Learn to use a simple mindset to create low-involvement products, helping appeal to instinct and making products hard to resist

This provocative book is built on the idea that businesses must return to a more human engagement methodology in order to succeed. It is an informative read for anyone interested in improving influence, growing business reach, improving sales figures or understanding the complexities of human behaviour.

PART I
We are all selfish, scared and stupid

Please, don’t be offended by this heading. As you will learn, we owe rather a lot to being selfish, scared and stupid. In fact, these qualities are not to be shunned but rather understood and even applauded.

A matter of survival

Being selfish, scared and stupid has shaped our evolution and helped us rise to the top of the food chain despite other species having better strength, speed, more acute senses and even, occasionally, more cunning.

The Happy Delusion

We delude ourselves about what really drives our behaviour and how this can cost us success, effectiveness and a connection with reality — but why?

Why failure happens

We have structured our systems, processes, organisations and entire communities in such a way that we fight our human nature and instead expect laboratory-like consistency in the real world.

CHAPTER 1
A matter of survival

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Carl Sagan

Congratulations. If you are reading this book, you have descended from a proud line of selfish, scared and stupid people. Those who came before you managed to look after themselves long enough to reproduce, although back in the days when your forebears wandered the earth, this was not what we would now consider a ripe old age. In fact, back then the age of reproduction was a great deal lower, an age that most cultures today would likely consider a ‘land yourself in jail’ age.

However, it is still a feat worth acknowledging as so many generations before us failed to pass on their genetic material to our current generation. If they had not been such a selfish, scared and stupid (not to mention horny) lot, you would not be reading the book currently resting in your hands (or on your tablet, if that is your preferred medium).

In fact, your line would most likely have been erased from history in an act of over-complicated bravery or selflessness that perhaps involved a cave, a large ferocious animal or a strange-looking plant and an overly curious palate. And so, this is rather a strange book in that it begins with a happy ending — your arrival at this point in history — bravo!

Charles Darwin is often described as the first proponent of the idea of survival of the fittest. Many of us presume it was Darwin who coined the phrase, but it was actually British polymath philosopher Herbert Spencer who, as part of an impressive résumé, lays claim to this honour (although it must be pointed out that this was achieved only after reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species).

In modern usage, the phrase is taken in a context that is perhaps at odds with its original meaning, but let’s suppose the widely (mis)-understood context is correct and it simply denotes that ‘the strongest and most dominant survive’. At this point it seems worth reminding our readers that human beings were far from the strongest species on the planet. Nor were we the fittest.

In fact, humanity survived and thrived principally because we were acutely aware of our frailties. We lived in a world where we were in constant danger and it is this that forced us to work hard at compensating for our weaknesses and doing whatever it took to keep ourselves breathing and breeding.

And so, we improvised, we invented; we adapted; we looked for ways of protecting ourselves; and we laid low when we needed to. Perhaps ‘survival of the fittest’ would be more reflective of our evolution if it were phrased thus: ‘survival of the most uncomplicated, terrified and self-interested’.

Now, before you begin to take offence at what some may call a disparaging description of our shared origins, take a moment to consider just how successful a strategy it has been. Which other species has been selfish, scared and stupid enough to conceive of sending another species into a mine in its stead to test whether the air is safe to breathe? Or wary enough to persuade another of its own kind to test its food for fear of poisoning? ‘Praegustators’, as the Romans referred to them, are a uniquely human invention (not an entirely foolproof plan as, in ancient Rome, the praegustator to the emperor Claudius failed to detect the supposed poisoned mushrooms that are widely believed to have ultimately sealed his fate). Adolf Hitler was also renowned to have been so acutely paranoid about his food being poisoned that he didn’t just have one food taster — he forced 15 women to taste his food before he ate it. Even in today’s White House, the president of the United States is believed to have a food taster of sorts, although naturally the White House will neither confirm nor deny the rumour. Leaving aside the moral repercussions of this practice, you still have to admire the ingenuity and creativity a little selfishness and fear provides.

These survival strategies have been highly useful. Human beings have managed to overcome species and dangers that were larger and far more dangerous than ourselves. We have survived countless natural threats and endured famines, diseases and disasters. We have lived and even thrived in hostile environments with no fur, fangs, poison or claws to speak of. Of course, there may have been a few million or so casualties along the way, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs now, can you?

Survival is a feat thousands of other species failed to achieve. In fact, scientists estimate that the success of the human species has accelerated what is considered to be a natural rate of extinction by 1000 to 10 000 times. Judging by those numbers, we did not simply survive — we conquered, becoming the dominant species on the planet. Although, in retrospect, this domination may come to be our ultimate undoing as we push this planet to the brink of perhaps our own extinction.

The members of our herd who were strategic enough — or rather selfish, scared and stupid enough — to survive and rise through the ranks of the food chain were not the brave, selfless souls who engineered complicated solutions and stood fearlessly to face impending storms or rampaging armies, or who nursed people in times of famine and disease. No, they were far more likely to be the ones bunkering down in the storm, standing well behind the battle lines and keeping conspicuously to themselves in times of viral epidemics.

So, given our cultural biases to celebrate the generous, brave and intellectual, how is it that being selfish, scared and stupid was not only an asset to our ancestors, but remains an asset to those of us who live in the modern world?

Selflessness is a recipe for extinction

Nursing the sick is one of those moments moviemakers love to employ to reassure us of the power of hope, faith, love and belief. We’ve all seen the moment on screen, stirring strings that slowly swell as a lone tear trickles down a pale cheek. A sleepless night. A fever. Despair. You think all is lost until … the music stills. A finger moves and then … a breath. Joy. Relief. Love at first bleary sight. Most certainly, those keeping vigil at the bedside of a stranger may be generous, noble and selfless, but in times of epidemic and rampant disease, it’s hardly the most effective survival strategy.

Let’s be frank, the best approach for survival in these circumstances involves selfishness, quarantine and a vast distance, preferably over a large body of water or an impenetrable mountain range.

Throughout history, being selfless has often meant extinction. Consider the ultimate expression of selflessness: the martyr. Whether they be religious or political zealots they all have a few things in common: putting themselves last, an unwavering belief and a family tree that looks like it has had a rather too severe pruning.

Much of our success as a species is due to our innate pull to protect our lives and those of our loved ones first and foremost. It is not in our still very primal natures to act in a selfless way towards strangers or other species that may threaten our own wellbeing (or else contribute to our diet).

This is one of the problems faced by charities. Their primary communications largely revolve around persuading the rest of us to look after a poor, unfortunate soul who has nothing at all to do with our own wellbeing. Though heartfelt and inspiring, it is a message that goes against thousands of years of hard wiring.

It should come as no surprise then, that organisations that try to enlist our help by garnering a sympathy vote, or confronting us with images designed to make us feel guilt or pity for complete strangers, are often more likely to elicit a desire to change the channel, or flip or click through to the next page.

People tend to think of charities as largely kind and benevolent organisations, driven by the need to serve the greater good. And this is mostly true, at least at the level of conscious intention until, of course, it comes to competing with other good causes for limited support and attention.

There are more than 2 million registered charities in the US, more than 1.7 million in the UK and more than 60 000 in Australia, with numbers growing rapidly. The world of charities is as competitive as The Hunger Games and the generosity of people finite. It is a jungle out there and to get through it, you need a machete. As callous as this probably sounds, there is only so much open generosity available to provide the help or headspace these worthy causes need.

While it may sound oddly contradictory, charities need to Think Selfish. Instead of starting from a position of, ‘Who are the people they wish to help?’, a more effective strategy may be to start with why the people they want to engage would want to help. In other words, understanding what drives human beings to give in the first place.

People ‘give’ to charities for all sorts of reasons, but when we truly boil it down, at some point we realise that giving actually makes us feel good. There is a reward of sorts on both sides of the equation. So while we like to think of giving to charity as … well … an act of charity, at some level we’re probably doing it to make ourselves feel good (or occasionally because we’re scared of what will happen to us spiritually if we don’t help out our fellow human beings).

We all like to think of ourselves as good people. For instance, no-one answers a questionnaire by saying, ‘I am a bad person at heart’, nor do they tend to describe themselves as self-focused or say they rank the rest of humanity on a scale that has themselves and their families comfortably situated at the top in positions that are not open to anything remotely similar to democracy or debate. This, in fact, is one of the limitations of unsophisticated research that fails to filter answers for underlying truths.

Research groups are often asked questions such as, ‘Do you consider yourself open minded?’ No-one ever says, ‘Well, no. You know what, I am utterly closed minded, painfully stuck in my ways with an unwavering inability to see any point of view but my own’. We are all far more likely to say, ‘Yes, yes, of course I am’.

We all like to feel as though we are not painfully prejudiced and loyal to our own opinions over those of others. We all want to feel good about who looks back at us in the mirror each morning. We are socialised to believe that self-sacrifice and a charitable nature are virtues to be proud of, and often they are.

However, today most charities have begun to understand what makes us ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Epigraph
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About The Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: We are all selfish, scared and stupid
• Part II: Think selfish
• Part III: Think scared
• Part IV: Think stupid
• Selfish, scared and stupid in the real world
• The Impossible Institute™
• Index
• Advert
• End User License Agreement