#49 - Make It Easy. For Whom?

Hello,

The Law of Least Effort rules the world. From the moment you wake up, just start noticing the things you do out of convenience, and by noon you will lose count. Like many things in life, the Law of Least Effort has its bright side (you conserve energy) and its shadow side (you may forgo better, but harder choices). When it's just about your own good, it's simple: prime your environment so that good behaviors become easier, and bad behaviors become harder. But what happens when someone else enters into the picture - your partner, colleague, your Client?

Here it gets really interesting, because your convenience may mean someone else's hardship and vice versa. Let's look at this 2x2 matrix. Quadrant A is ideal but often unattainable, Quadrant C is an obviously bad choice. Your real dilemmas are between quadrants B & D: you make it easier, but for whom, really?

What do you choose? When you write, do you bounce a quick sloppy email or spend time and mental effort to construct the message so that it's easier for your reader? When you deliver a presentation, do you actually put yourself in your audience's shoes? When you launch an operational efficiency initiative, do you make a reality check to see if it accidentally makes Client Experience worse?

When you know that your Clients' convenience often trumps quality and loyalty, choices that make your life easier no longer sound like a good idea.

Below are some ideas that inspired this edition.

The Law of Least Effort

"Conventional wisdom holds that motivation is the key to habit change. Maybe if you really wanted it, you'd actually do it. But the truth is, our real motivation is to be lazy and do what is convenient. And despite that the latest productivity best seller will tell you, it's a smart strategy, not a dumb one.

Energy is precious, and the brain is wired to conserve it whenever possible. It is human nature to follow the Law of Least Effort, which states that when deciding between two similar options, people will naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of effort.

Create an environment where doing the right thing is as easy as possible.

Reduce the friction associated with good behaviors. When friction is low, habits are easy.

Increase the friction associated with bad behaviors. When friction is high, habits are difficult.

Prime your environment to make future actions easier."

Source: Atomic Habits, by James Clear

Choice vs. Convenience

We have far more choices than we realize. It's convenience that holds us back: social convenience, physical convenience (we typically choose what is handy), intellectual convenience (changing our mind makes us uncomfortable), financial convenience (if it's cheaper in the short run, we are more likely to choose it), cultural convenience (a combination of all the above; culture likes the status quo).

"If we ever saw precisely how much freedom of choice we have if we were willing to sacrifice convenience for it, we’d be paralyzed. But if the choices we’re making now aren’t helping us live the way we choose, it might be worth taking a hard look at why."

Choice vs. Convenience - from Seth's Blog

You've Got To Make It Easy. But For Whom Really?

"My philosophy of the consumer is that the consumer, humans, are in an eternal quest for convenience, save me time, make my life easier. And if you can build a product that demonstrably saves them time, gives them more convenience, they'll take your product and they'll take it over quality. I mean, look at the microwave oven. It doesn't cook nearly as well as the conventional ovens, a big hit. Look how few people now have a wired phone line. My mobile phone isn't nearly as good. I traded quality for convenience, and people do it every time they make the transactions. Now there's a little small group of people, maybe about 10% of the people, the aficionados in any segment that don't behave that way, but the vast majority of people behave that way (...)

I think you have to treat the consumer with great respect, so you can't intentionally give them an inferior product or try and sell it as something more than it is. But I think that in the hierarchy of things, you have to realize that convenience is king and you've got to make it easy. I can't tell you how many people I've seen build products that either they put some hurdles in there because it makes their job easier to build the product. Or they service it poorly so if I've got a problem, now here comes the hurdles. Every business I've been in that's business that's been in existence, I can close my eyes when I walk in there and say, your number one problem is, you built your company on operational ease.

And by the way, a group of humans put together, if you leave them for 10 minutes, they're going to start making their job easy, not the ease for their consumer. And often we say, "Boy, that's a lot of work. We got to work all weekend." I go, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess we got to work all weekend." That if you sign up to really super-serve the consumer and make life easy for them, you have to be prepared not to have a platitude, but put it there and that means sometimes you're making operationally much more difficult.

Lessons From Building Media Empires - The Founder's Field Guide Podcast with Bob Pittman

Treat the Reader's Time As More Valuable Than Your Own

"Treat the reader's time as more valuable than your own. That couldn't be simpler. And yet everything that's wrong with the way business people write stems from ignoring this principle.

A marketer creates a website to describe her company. She's on a deadline and has to get input from multiple people. Eventually, she gives up and cobbles together some prose that has everybody's fingerprints on it. is her top priority the reader's time? No, it's getting the text into the site by the deadline.

A coworker emails you and a dozen others about a problem in your department. He puts down the elements in the order that they occur to him. The subject is "I was just thinking". He's been very efficient with his own time. Is he respecting your time, too? Nope.

These people aren't inherently selfish. They're just busy. When you're busy, you worry more about yourself and your deadlines. Unfortunately, each small step toward expediency erodes your own sense of integrity.

Bullshit is communication that wastes the reader's time by failing to communicate clearly and accurately. Lies are not the biggest problem in business communication. The biggest problem is lack of clarity."

How to reduce BS in your writing? Use the meaning ratio = meaningful words / total words. An ideal passage, of course, would have a meaning ratio of 100%. A passage with the meaning ratio of 80% is readable. But once you get below 70%, you're in the bullshit territory.

Writing Without Bullshit : Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean, by Josh Bernoff

Kings of Convenience

The music to end this edition is, well, a royal choice of convenience :)

Have a great weekend ahead, make it easy and take it easy,

Arina

Illustration using photo by Danny SwellChasers on Unsplash