Description
Find lists of local social organizations where people go to meet one another. Select those which seem to offer the best prospects.
Go along and meet people. Join in the activities. Get to know the folks. Make friends. Enjoy the company.
Get referrals. Sell quietly to them and their companies.
And when you are no longer enjoying yourself and no longer doing business, leave and join another club.
You can also do this with your children, talking with other parents. Of course you should only encourage your kids to join clubs for things they will enjoy!
You may also be able to invite prospective customers to the club, which can provide a pleasant environment in which to get information and more from them.
Example
A salesperson who is interested in stamps joins a local philatelic club. His clear knowledge and interest leads to many friends being made, who also give him information to help him sell elsewhere.
An insurance salesperson joins the local Round Table and quietly gets leads and referrals from other members.
A real estate agent joins the local golf club and does much business out on the links.
Discussion
Clubs and societies are often either based around specific interests, such as model railways, or tend to have a class-based division. Thus, for example, there are many middle-class clubs.
These societies often meet out of office hours and there will be a limited number you can practically join at one time, so do select those which seem most suitable. Also try to find ones you will enjoy!
Note that if you are too overt about selling and getting information you can evoke a betrayal response, so do be subtle about this. It really helps if you join in whole-heartedly. If you just turn up occasionally and do not help out, you are more likely to be found out and ignored.
Some of these societies are quite selective, such as the freemasons. However, when you have joined, they may also provide the best contacts. People in such organizations often seek to help one another in business as well as life.
Description
The cold canvas method is the simplest, oldest and most ineffective method there is. It relies solely on finding and talking to people who you have no idea whether or not will buy from you.
Be personal (but not too personal)
Acknowledge that they are human and also show that you are human too. Use their name, but not too much. Tell them your name. Reveal a little about yourself, but again not too much.
Be respectful
As well as being personal, always show respect to the person. You have entered their territory uninvited and must show that you are worthy of their time.
Go for yes
As with the Yes-set Close, getting agreement sets a pattern whereby they are more likely to agree. Ask them questions with which they can only agree.
Ask for time
If you ask them for a few minutes and they say yes, they will feel obliged to give you that time. Do stick to the time too.
Get to benefits quickly
After getting early permission to talk (or maybe before), you need to sustain their attention by creating an interest, which often means addressing the 'what's in it for me' question by telling them something of the benefits they can gain from conversing with you further.
Wonder
It's a powerful little thing, to wonder something aloud. Just try wondering if they will do what you want them to do. When you wonder if they will do something, you are suggesting that they do it without commanding directly.
Get to base 2
Success in cold calling often means getting permission to continue the conversation at a future time. It may be that you send them some information, but much better than this is for you to call or visit at a future date and time.
Make them feel good
Whether you succeed or not in moving the to the next base, do try to make them feel good. Thank them. Tell them they sound or look good. Be impressed with them and what they do.
Even if they reject you (and especially if they reject you) leave them on a positive note.
Example
Is that Mr. Elwyn Jones? ... You are the IT Director? ... Good, good. Mr. Jones, I wonder if you can give me two minutes in which I can show you something that will save you days.
Ms Bleddyn, are you busy today? .. Would you like more time? ... you know I work with busy people to give them more time.
Well, thank you anyway, Mr. Evans. You're doing important work there and I wish you well.
Discussion
Cold calling is probably one of the most frustrating and unrewarding jobs, as you may have to deal with hundreds of rejections -- and some of these may be quite unpleasant. Attributes of successful cold-callers include robust optimism, strong self-belief and a resilience that lets you bounce back fresh every time.
People who are called cold may be annoyed at this and project their anger onto you. To justify their feelings, they may well frame you as a bad person and act accordingly. You can use this by being unremittingly nice. This may lead to them feeling guilty about their unpleasantness and hence relenting and listening to you.
Asking people for something whereby they agree, for example for a little of their time, makes it difficult for them to pull out. This is due to the consistency principle, where people seek to align what they say with with what they do.
Note that if you ask for or take too much, you may get a betrayal response as they feel that you are taking advantage of them.
Leaving them on a positive note can create remarkable turnarounds. They typically will feel a little guilty about rejecting you and expect some coldness in return. But if you reply with warmth, it can cause a last-minute reprieve or a later call-back as they change their mind about you.
The cold call is also known as a cold canvas.
Description
Go to the conferences and exhibitions where your potential customers go.
Make presentations that will impress them with your products and services. Give out copies of your paper and other material.
Hold 'clinics' where customers can come and discuss their difficulties and issues.
Man the stands and talk to as many people as possible. and draw them into sufficient conversation to discover their potential as a customer or who they know.
Give out your card, of course. Also get their cards.
Example
An industrial carpet company goes to an assortment of facilities management shows, doing demonstrations of their low-wear range and giving out samples. Their top salespeople not only man the stand - they also go around seeking customers from other stand-holders.
A consultant regularly writes knowledgeable papers and presents them at a range of conferences. The conversations afterwards regularly lead to useful business for her or her associates.
Discussion
Conferences and exhibitions are attended by many like-minded people, often of management level and from similar industries. Not only attendees but also presenters may be met here.
These events are thronged with people for a relatively short period. There is thus little time to sell, but there is huge potential to get leads and identify prospective customers.
Description
Carefully develop and write marketing material that will appeal to your prospective audience.
Provide clear and easy contact information, such as:
• Web address
• Email address
• Fax address
• Free phone number
• Pre-paid postcard
Send it through the mail or otherwise deliver it to their door.
Make sure that all calls and messages go to a specialized location that can respond rapidly and knowledgeably. Quickly follow up on all responses.
You can do the same with email, although do be careful with the image that is created in all cases.
Example
An office cleaning company has a national campaign of sending agency-designed material to target companies. All responses are tracked, including those that come through a specially set up web page. Sales people call and visit all respondents.
A double-glazing company hand-delivers leaflets to houses in the local area where they are doing work.
Discussion
Direct mail is not the method of choice for all businesses, but if you want a very wide coverage, it can be a perfectly acceptable method.
Direct mail is the equivalent of cold calling as it is targeted at people who may well have no interest, and hence has a very high rejection rate. It is thus important that the cost of mailing is more than offset by the profit from the leads that it gives.
Response rates can be increased by the use of promotions such as entering respondents for a draw and may making the material supplied useful or interesting.
The relatively high numbers of items printed for a large campaign requires that careful design and proof reading are critical activities. You do not want to give potential customers evidence of shoddy work!
Direct mail can cause a negative response and thus should be used carefully. The paper version is often called 'bumph' (from 'bum fodder') and the electronic version is called 'spam'. Most direct mail is not read and goes straight to the bin.
Description
Become an expert in an area where prospective customers have a need for expertise. Or use the expertise you have and develop your sales skills further.
Get your interest and expertise known, for example by:
• Publishing interesting articles in trade journals.
• Writing a book on the subject.
• Speaking at subject conferences.
• Starting a website that is a 'category killer' in the subject.
• Writing a blog on the subject.
• Announce your expertise on your business card.
With enough publicity, people will beat a path to your door.
Example
A pen salesperson becomes a national expert on writing style and graphology.
A professor of medicine helps in the sales team for medical instrumentation to major customers.
Discussion
Expertise first of all gives you credibility, and credibility engenders trust. With expertise you have the power of authority and can make unchallenged assertions.
With expertise you can also help your customers resolve real problems and so create an exchange dynamic.
People like experts, partly because simply by associating with the expert, they feel a little more expert too. The certainty that the expert brings also helps people feel a stronger sense of control.
One of the most difficult parts of selling is prospecting, or getting new customers. By far the most powerful thing you can have when approaching new people is a referral from their colleagues, friends or others they respect.
The big question that comes before using referrals is getting the referrals in the first place.
When and why it works
Getting referrals can be gained any time: after you are turned away, after closing the deal, after great service or just any time!
After refusal
After you have been turned away or not made the sale is a great time to ask for a referral. But why should a person give you a referral when they could easily just blow you off? The basic answer is that it gives them an opportunity for absolution from the sin of saying no.
There is a basic social moral that says 'help others', which makes people want to be nice. We generally dislike refusing and turning away other people, so when we say no, we are more likely to agree to give a referral to the sales person.
The basic exchange is thus they give you referrals in exchange for your forgiveness for them not being able to spend more time with you or buy your products and services.
After the close
After people have bought from you, they are feeling the post-close warmth and are thus more ready to help you. This also helps them justify to themselves why they signed the deal ('It's such a great bargain, I should let others into the secret').
If you have made concessions during the negotiation, then they may feel further obliged to offer you a referral in compensation.
After great service
If you sell someone a great product or give them great service, particularly if you have just put yourself 'above and beyond' expectations, to help them, then they will be ready to help you in return by giving you a good referral.
Any other time
People will give you referrals when you meet in the bar, on the bus or any time you can speak with them. You are paying them attention, helping them feel good. In return, they may give you a great referral.
Avoiding the referral traps
There are several traps in seeking referrals that can lead to you being given the wrong person or no person at all.
Asking incorrectly may dissuade the other person from giving you names of other people. If they are not interested in you or what you have to sell, then they may well be unwilling to foist you on their friends. Do remember that by giving a referral, they are putting their necks on the line. If you annoy the referred person, then that person will likely complain to the referrer.
Worse than giving you no referrals is fobbing you off with a worthless referral, thus wasting your time further.
The 'anyone' trap
Asking 'Is there anyone else...' is first a closed question to which it is easy to say 'no'. Also when you ask 'anyone' it does not really help the other person to think about specific people you can call.
Always ask for a specific 'who', not a general and vague 'anyone' or 'someone'.
The 'wants product' trap
Asking for who 'may want the product' may result in the other person trying to think of somebody who has been asking for a product or service like yours. And of course there will be very few or none of these.
The trick to get around this is to ask for who has the type of problems that your product or service resolves. The other person is much more likely to know this.
Who do you know who is having product reliability problems?
Can you tell me who here is having issues computer support issues?
Building it in
The key to real success in referrals is to build requesting referrals right into your sales process.
Ask regularly
Asking for referrals occasionally will get you only limited referrals. You can get many more valuable referrals by doing it regularly.
Put it on the form
If you use a sales call form (paper or electronic), filling in details of each sales visit or call, then include a section of the form that has fields for referral details.
Get full detail
Do make sure you get full details. This includes the name of the person, contact information for them, their job title, the relationship with the referrer and further information about their situation.
Think creatively
Look beyond your normal customers. Find partners in getting referrals. Be creative! Here are a few ideas:
• Make calls solely for the purpose of seeking referrals.
• Go to conferences and exchange business cards.
• Call up people who supply complementary products to yours. Partner with them, giving them referrals in return.
• Get referrals from sponsorship deals. You sponsor a charity event and they give your referrals in return.
• Talk to people who talk to people, like reception staff, secretaries, hairdressers, etc.
• Get back to people after the visit to say thank you. And to ask for referrals.
More research
The referral is going to open a door for you. It would be a shame to waste it through lack of sufficient knowledge. Take the necessary time to research further into the person, the problem, the department, the company and its operational environment such that you are ready to take full advantage of the situation.
The opening pitch
The most important part of using referrals, as with any meeting, is the first few words that you use, which makes it very important to get them right. Here is a way of doing this:
Hello Mr Jones. My name is Jeff Wooldrich and Jennifer Aniston suggested that I call you. Can I take five minutes to explain why?
Good morning Ms. Eleman. My name is Sarah Parker and Mike Williams told me you are currently looking for a new turret dryer system. I may be able to help you with this -- is it ok now to take a few minutes to discuss this?
Notice that there are three parts to this:
• A basic greeting
• The referral
• A reason to continue
The greeting is a fairly standard and formal introduction that sets the standard and expectations of a polite conversation. The referral acts as a bridge, linking to the real request. The reason to continue extends this.
In effect, the referring person's name buys you a bit more space in which to hook the customer. If they cannot be caught in this extra time then you have probably lost this particular fish.
The continuation
After getting permission to continue, you may be able to leverage the referring person again by talking about the benefits that they gained from working with you.
Explain why you have been referred to the person and check that your understanding of the situation is correct.
I was able to help Jennifer get a substantially increased contract protection and I understand that you may be looking for similar benefits. Is this true?
If they agree with your description, then continue as a normal sales call. If they disagree, ask them why you were referred to them.
Hmm. Looks like I haven't quite got my facts right. I wonder why Jennifer gave me your name.
This may give you a further lead or may lead you to qualify out the person. If you get no joy with them, you can, of course, ask them for a further referral.
A further point that is often useful to remember is to keep the person who gave you the referral in the loop. When the referred person knows this they will trust you more. The referrer will also appreciate knowing what happened and may give you more referrals as a result!
Description
Orphaned customers are those who have got part way through a sales cycle but for some reason have been abandoned.
This can happen when other salespeople in your company are overloaded, go on holiday or leave the company. Standing by to catch the fallout can help both you and your company.
You can also find orphans at exhibitions and conferences. Watch for people looking a bit lost or expectant.
Example
A sales person in a company goes on maternity leave. Another sales person catches her before she leaves and gets her list of leads to follow up on.
A sales person finds out that a competitor's sales person is going on holiday for a month. Whilst the other sales person is away, the first sales person calls on a number of the common customers.
Discussion
Customers are used to attention, especially when they are thinking about buying. If they are 'abandoned' by one sales person, they may feel rejected and losing esteem. When another sales person comes along and 'rescues' them, their gratitude to that sales person may oblige them to give a consideration to what that sales person has to say above and beyond what they might normally give.
Description
Work together with other sales people to share the burden of prospecting.
You can even do this with sales people from other companies where they are selling complementary products.
You can either work very closely together on a daily basis or meet up every now and again to discuss how the business and general prospecting is going. As well as sharing leads, also share methods and ways of converting prospects into customers.
Help each other succeed.
Example
A group of sales people from different industries who all work in the same city meet up monthly in bar to share problems, ideas and leads.
A sales manager encourages regional sales teams to share in prospecting work rather than all work independently, jealously guarding their own customers but perhaps at the expense of the company's real goals.
Discussion
Prospecting clubs work when they use the principle of 'expanding the pie'. Sales people can have a mentality of a zero-sum, fixed pie, assuming that if they help other sales people they are somehow losing out themselves, at least in the time 'wasted' in this activity.
If, however, sales people share openly, then leads and prospects that might otherwise go to waste can be of benefit to them, at least sometimes. Sharing methods can also have lasting benefit, perhaps saving time in every call or making calls more effective.
Description
Find information about individuals and organizations who might buy from available information such as their blogs and information on company officers.
Companies often have web pages on their sites that describe their history, organization and products. More useful information can be found on pages designed to attract and inform investors.
There are also many useful websites and firms that provide company information, such as Hoover's and Dun and Bradstreet.
You can often find email addresses by guessing, as they typically are in the form 'fred.jones@xyz.com'. Common alternatives include 'fjones@xyz.com' and 'jonesf@xyz.com'.
Look also for articles by and other information about the person you are investigating. You might even find their blog, from which much useful data can be gleaned.
Avoid mass emailing - this is 'spam' and can get you and your company into trouble.
A problem with any cold emailing is that your letter may not be read or even be removed by a spam filter. If possible, phone beforehand and follow up with email.
Example
If you look around this site, you will be able to find a lot of personal information about its author! (hint: look at the blog and at bottom of any page).
Discussion
These days the web is a primary place to find basic company information. With a little persistence and technique, you can find a lot more besides.
It is surprising how often even relatively confidential information such as telephone numbers can be found. If you email a person and they reply (or even get an autoreply), the response may well include their job title and desk/cell phone numbers.
Description
You can use your company website as an automated prospecting tool. Here are a number of things you can do:
• Generally make the site attractive and easy to use.
• Put your full product catalog online. Also let them download a .pdf and order a paper copy.
• Make sure there is a 'contact' link on every page.
• Allow them to make both free-text queries and guiding them through a product tree.
• Add 'call me' links, whereby they enter their phone number and you call them back. Do this as quickly as possible.
• Use cookies so you can track the person and offer customized information.
• Use analytics programs to give more sophisticated analysis of overall customer activity around your site.
Also differentiate between websites that are designed to sell online and those which are designed to create leads and find prospects. If you want the latter, then design your site to achieve this, not the former. If necessary, set up a separate site or subsite designed for professional buyers.
Example
Discussion
Websites such as Amazon are benchmarks for personalization as they not only remember your name but where you have gone on the site.
Usability of sites is very important. People will start abandoning the site if they cannot find what they want within three clicks. The further information is down a page, the less likely it is that they will read it (and especially if they have to start scrolling for something that is not visible).
You may have noticed that websites are replacing sales people! Whilst this is an unstoppable force and companies that fight it may go out of business, there are also many companies where a direct sales force is still very important.
The Prospect is...
A 'prospect' is short for a 'prospective customer'. It is a person or company who may buy from you.
A prospect is more than a lead
A 'lead' is information about a person or company who may become a prospect. Thus a friend might give you the number of an acquaintance who might benefit from what you have to sell.
A prospect is a person
Many people find the term 'prospect' a bit insulting, as it reduces a person to an object. Always remember that leads and prospects are people, with feelings and lives like yours. They struggle, succeed and fail. They are not a number and not a thing.
Prospecting is...
Prospecting is searching for prospects. Just as a person searching for gold is a 'prospector', so also is a salesperson searching for customers.
...necessary
Prospecting is a necessary task for many sales people who need to replace customers who do not return and find new customers to grow and sustain the business.
...difficult
Prospecting is also difficult. Someone once said 'you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince' -- and in prospecting, you often have to talk to a lot of people before you find a customer who will buy from you.
Prospecting is not always an easy job and successful prospectors are worth their weight in gold (and should earn it too).
Optimism
Two of the most important attributes of sales person who is prospecting, and in particular cold calling, are optimism and resilience. You have to keep on believing you will find a customer whilst receiving seemingly endless rejections (some of which may not be very pleasant).
An attitude of liking people also helps. When you talk with another person you quickly pick up on whether they like you or are treating you as just another person -- and you are much more likely to do business with those who like you.
Instinct
The successful prospector, like the seeker after gold, develops a 'nose' for where gold might lie and instincts when talking to people that tell them whether or not the person is likely to buy.
Persistence
And the successful prospector digs a lot of holes, and digs them quickly. If you have the basics, prospecting is often just a numbers game.
Also when you are talking to someone who seems disinterested, the longer you keep talking with them, they more likely you are to convert them. Whilst it is important to qualify out those who are unlikely to buy, you may also be able to persuade those who are uncertain to take the next step. This is a riskier move as many who are convinced now may regress later, but depending on your sales situation just speaking to a person may be a significant gain, in which case a longer discussion is usually desirable.
Process
Prospecting is not just a matter of writing and calling. It involves a repeatable and well-proven methodology. Sales people who get the structure and process right are more likely to succeed. This includes gathering and managing data, and wording of letters, emails and phone calls.
The drunk and the key
There is an old story about a drunk who is on his hands and knees under a street lamp, patting the ground and diligently searching here and there. A policeman comes up and ask him what the matter is. The drunk says that he has lost the key for his house. The policeman, having a quiet night, decides to be friendly and joins in looking for the keys. Before long some other people come along and join in too, much to the gratitude of the drunk.
After a while, someone notes that there is limited space here and surely the key would have been found by now. "Where did you lose the key?" she asks the drunk. "Over there" says the drunk, pointing down the road. "So why are we looking here?" asks the policeman, as the other people also stop looking and exasperatedly look at the drunk. "Because it's dark over there!" says the drunk.
Fish where the fish are
We are often like the drunk. We look for customers in places where we are more comfortable, and in so doing miss out on many possible leads and sales.
Sales leads and prospects are found all over the place, and not just where you think they should be or where they were last time you looked.
A common trap is to fish in the same pond until it is pretty much fished out. Yet we still sit there with our rod, perhaps sighing about the good old days. To fish in the ocean you need a good sonar and real intelligence.
So get out there and find customers wherever they might be. Look in strange places and think about people who might not be customers now but could be.
One of the hardest things for a sales person to deal with is a flat refusal, which is perhaps why cold calling is one of the most disliked activities. If, however, you can turn a refusal into an interesting and valuable experience, then your job can become much more interesting!
Don't take it personally
It's easy to take a rejection of a product or sales call as a rejection of you, personally. It seems as if the people don't like you in some way, or that you have personally failed somehow.
If you take this position, you are going to be a very sad person. Sales is full of rejections. You need at least to learn to put failures behind you. Look forward. There are many more people out there who are desperate for what you are selling.
Be objective. Separate the problem from the person, just as you might when you are selling. In fact you can sell to yourself the benefits of (this time) not completing the sale.
Leave the door open
Thank the person, whatever they say. Thank them for their time and for listening. Appreciate their situation and why they are not ready to take things further today (note the assumption that they may be ready another day).
Never take revenge, even with little snide remarks, because that will mean that at minimum they will never buy from you or your company again and maybe they will take revenge on your revenge, such as calling your boss or complaining about aggravation.
Learn from it
Take the opportunity to learn from what happened.
Think about the conversation, what was said and how it flowed. Think about the body language and voice tone. Were there any key moments when things went awry? How might it have been different? How might another person act and talk, perhaps a sales person you admire?
Be open and honest (but not berating) with yourself. Do you have any deep needs or limiting beliefs that are getting in the way? Are there any preferences that you have that are making you miss things? Are you trapped in any dysfunctional games that are preventing you from selling more often?
After telling them that you accept they are not ready now, you may also ask them for feedback on how you performed as a sales person and how you can be more effective. This can be effective sometimes are re-opening the door as they realize that you are a concerned person.
See also
There are three needs in customers that sales people seek when prospecting. This leads to three types of customer that need different approaches.
Three factors
Although prospective customers have many different needs, there are three factors that the sales person wants to know.
Know problem
The customer may or may not know that they have a problem that they need to solve. The sales person needs to know so that the potential to make a sale that solve the problem is identified.
Motivated to solve the problem
When the customer knows that they have a problem, they must be motivated to solve it. If they see it as unimportant or not worth spending time and money on it, then the sales person has an uphill job.
Know what's needed to solve the problem
The customer may also know what they need in order to solve the problem. This can be good news for the sales person. It can also be problematic.
The knowing customer
The knowing customer understands the problem, wants to solve it and knows what they need. They approach the sales person with the question 'I need an X, do you have one?'
If the sales person has what is wanted, the sale is easy and quicker than the qualification, which may be minimal (and particularly when the customer makes the first approach).
This can be problematic if the sales person does not have what is wanted. They may need to question the customer to understand the problem and might offer an alternative solution, although this requires convincing the customer that what is being sold is better than what the customer initially asked for. This is a common situation in selling.
The solution seeker
The solution-seeking customer knows that they have a problem and are motivated to solve it, but do not know the solution. They approach the sales person with a 'Help me' request.
In many ways this is the ideal customer as the sales person is cast as a rescuer who helps the customer solve the problem and makes a sale in the process. The trick in qualification is to quickly find out whether the products being sold actually can solve the problem.
The clueless customer
Finally is a customer who many sales people avoid as they often require more selling. These prospective customers do not know they have a problem or are not motivated to solve it. They thus repel initial advances by the salesperson.
The dilemma for the sales person is that there are many prospective customers in this class, which is good, but the work needed to sell to them is significant, which is bad.
This leads to two types of selling that requires quite different attitudes.
Two types of selling
The points above lead to two types of selling, rooted either in the carrot or the stick.
Problem-solving
The first type of selling seeks the easier sell. Significant prospecting is done in order to qualify out the clueless. A few early questions are used to decide this before spending more time with the customer.
The focus of this style of selling is thus on solving the agreed problem with the products the sales person has. It spends more time in creating pull for the carrot of the product.
Problem-creating
The second type of selling qualifies out far fewer and is more common when getting to prospective customers is difficult or where relatively few customers know they have a problem.
This type of selling expects to start with convincing customers that they have a problem and this is thus a 'problem-creating' sales style in that the major breakthrough happens when the customer realizes that they have a problem. Although it may use later pull, it starts more with a push as it focuses on creating the discomfort of realizing the problem.
Principle
I force you to act, whether you want to do it or not. You feel no option but to obey.
How it works
No choice
Many forms of persuasion seek to change what people believe such that they act through their own free will. In a push approach, although physical force may not be used, the people feel they are obliged to comply even though may be against their better judgment.
Non-physical push
For non-physical pushing, you need power or authority that impacts the needs that the other person. The level of threat needs to be high enough that they feel obliged to comply with your request. In a company this can be the power to dismiss, demote or sideline them.
In business, pushing appears when managers tell their subordinates what to do (as opposed to creating pull by selling them on the idea).
Physical coercion
For physical coercion, all you need is to be stronger than them. In countries, the police and military forces have a high coercive capability and are the ultimate tools of government for assuring order in their country. Within companies, security organizations play a similar role. With children, adults physical size gives that power. Between individual adults, coercion can be carried out with physical size, strength, knowledge of martial arts or the use of weapons.
Companies need coercion to eject intruders and the occasional employee who lose control of themselves. In practice, it can be bad publicity and companies will do their best to avoid any form of direct force.
Governments use coercive methods to control and contain criminals (who themselves tend to push more than pull). They also use it in war with their neighbors and enemies, whether they are the aggressor or the defender.
Principle
Lead them such that they choose to act.
How it works
Pulling a person in motivation means creating conditions that they chose themselves. It means showing them how something else will be beneficial to them. It means them deciding rather than just you deciding.
Most methods of persuasion are based on creating pull rather than push, which is generally coercive in nature.
Creating desire
Pull creates desire. It is about making the other person want what you are offering. It is subtly changing how they perceive the world such that they see what you have and want it. Once you have created desire, then the internal tension set up in the other person will lead them in the right direction.
Push and Pull
Push and pull are a matched pair: Pushing is the stick to the carrot of pulling. It is fishing rather than shooting. It is selling as opposed to the telling of push methods. It is creating desire rather than creating fear. It is creating attraction rather than repulsion.
In business motivation, pushing is a management method whilst pulling is used by leaders.
Pulling is more difficult than pushing, but is ultimately more effective. When you push, you do not know what direction the other person will take. It is like the sheepdog running into the flock of sheep: they all head off in different directions. Pulling has just one direction. It is like being the shepherd, towards whom his flock will move.
Use push and pull together: Push just to break people away from their current position. This will cause confusion, after which you can much more easily pull them. This method is used by martial artists in such as Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan.
When you phone a person in cold-call sales or prospecting, the first thing you probably want to know is that they are the person that you expect. Verifying the person both ensures your assumptions are correct about who you are speaking with.
Verifying the person is likely to be your first words to them, and it is well known that impressions are formed in the first few seconds, so it is critical to get this right.
Verifying their name
Unless you have been passed to the person by someone else (and maybe even then), it can be helpful to verify the name of the person on the other end of the phone.
Even in this short task, your words can make a difference. Consider the following few sentences.
Is that Mr. Jones?
This uses a formal address of 'Mr. Jones', which is often a good start. Do not use informal names until somewhat later. However, it is also rather short and peremptory statement. It may be sufficient but may also be felt as being rather curt.
Am I speaking to Mr. Jones?
This is more conversational and slightly longer, which gives you more opportunity to convey what a nice person you are through the varying tone of your voice. It however still misses a couple of tricks.
Am I talking with Mr. Harry Jones?
Here you are using their first name, with which they have strong identity attachment, yet this is within a formal frame and so should not offend.
Note also the difference between 'speaking to' in the previous quote and 'talking with' in this one. 'Speaking to' is a unidirectional action, with you projecting words at the other person. 'Talking with' has a more conversational element and implies that they are going to respond. This simple change can make the world of difference.
Verifying their position
You may also want to verify their formal position or job. This is an important qualification, as it tells you if this person is the right person.
By speaking it, you also remind them of their job, which may include listening to people like you.
In this, you can use their job title or their role. Let's look at a few examples.
Are you the Marketing Manager of Alpha Soups?
This tests both their role and where they work and continues getting a 'yes', building their yes-set. Linking the two reminds them of their responsibility to the company.
You are the Marketing Manager of Alpha Soups?
This is a minor change but can have a significant effect. Saying 'you are' rather than 'are you' is a more assertive frame, but framed as a question it is usually acceptable. Nevertheless, by agreeing with you, they are putting themselves in a position where they are accepting your assertions and thus will more likely repeat this pattern in the future.
What is not covered, however, is what the marketing manager actually does.
Can I ask if you control placing of newspaper and visual media advertisements?
This focuses on what they do rather than the name of their job, which is perhaps more important for you. It also uses the cover of an easy 'can I ask' to probe for the detail you really want.
This is a sequence of steps you can use when you are calling a prospective customer for the very first time.
Get their attention
Say something that get their attention. This may be something simple.
Good morning Mr. Williams.
Do not use gimmick openers. These are pretty well-known these days and are more likely to be experienced as an insult to their intelligence.
Mr. X. If I told you a way to halve your tax and double your income, would you be interested?
Identify yourself
They will want to know who you are, so quickly and simply introduce yourself and your company.
My name is Peter Jones from Carlsbridge Associates, the largest executive placement firm in the city.
Do not try to gain credibility by telling them how wonderful you are. This will only lose, not gain, respect.
My name is Peter Jones, six-times consultant-of-the-month from Carlsbridge Associates.
Tell them why you're calling
Give them good reason to continue to converse with you by explaining clearly why you are calling.
The demand for top executives in the city has doubled in the past year and I'm calling to find out if you have been affected.
Again beware of falling into a promotional pitch that turns them off rather than gets them excited.
We can solve all of your executive problems with our superior portfolio of services, from assessment to sourcing and in-place coaching.
Qualify them
Before you move on, you need to know whether it is worth your spending more time with them. You thus need to do an initial qualification. Whilst you may well do further qualification at a later date, a quick qualification now will sort out those who you have no hope of selling to.
Can I ask if you may be seeking good executives this year?
Move to the next steps
If they are qualified out by their response, thank them and hang up. If, however, they are still prospects, then move them to the next step.
Could we continue this conversation in person? Perhaps I could take you out to lunch next week some time?
Selling is like pouring water down a leaky funnel. You guide water into the top of funnel, but the only useful water is that which reaches the spout. This gives you some big problems around getting water in and managing leakages.
Qualifying-in
In the sales funnel the first job is qualifying in, deciding who to nudge into the funnel in the first place. This is a tricky decision, as once they are in the funnel you will be spending significant effort in getting them to buy -- effort you would rather not waste. On the other hand, if you qualify them out, you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Qualifying-in is thus a very important process. Get it right and you will have some brilliant prospects. Get it wrong and you will waste time on people who will not buy and, perhaps worse, lose those who will.
Flow management
Once they are in the funnel, the job is to progress them through it at maximum speed and with minimum effort. Along the way there may be a number of points where you progress them further or qualify them out of the funnel.
In the speed-effort equation, a common factor is that by adding effort, which often takes time, you may increase the value (to you) of the deal. This in itself needs careful qualification and monitoring -- it is easy to waste time selling just a bit more when your time would be better spent on another deal.
Some deals get stuck or move rather slowly through the funnel, making qualifying-out an important job. It can be easy for the funnel to become clogged and regular clean-outs are a good idea. Depending on your situation, this can mean getting rid of them completely or otherwise putting them on the back-burner.
Funnel shape
The size and shape of the funnel is important. The total volume of the funnel determines how many potential customers can fit in the funnel at once. If deals move slowly or if you have a larger sales force, then the funnel may be larger. If qualifying-in is difficult, then the funnel can be wide at top and then narrow down rapidly as you have early qualification-out exercises. It can also be stepped as successive qualification checks lead to prospective deals being qualified out at specific points.
You can make a better tunnel and work here can pay dividends. For example you can speed passage through it by improving qualification, greasing the sides (with less delays) and shortening the whole thing by simplifying the overall process.
The marketing funnel
Upstream of the sales funnel is the marketing funnel. The processes that drive potential customers to your door or which drive you to their door also have aspects of qualification and choice. If marketing sends the wrong message, then you may find the top of your funnel crowded with the wrong people. The marketing funnel should accurately feed the sales funnel and it is generally a very good idea for sales and marketing people to collaborate on this.
Not all selling needs a complex sales funnel, and if you are in retail sales, then your customers likely buy in one go. Yet the funnel principle can still be useful for you. Think about on a micro-scale -- how can you speed each sale? Think also of the upstream marketing funnel -- how do customers decide to come to your store rather than go elsewhere?
There are several measurements you can use to determine the success and health of your funnel. These are typically measured over a fixed period, such as weekly, monthly or quarterly. This can then be used to show how well the funnel is doing and prompt corrective action.
Funnel value
Funnel value is the potential value of all the deals in the funnel. This represents future sales and can be used to plot estimated income over time.
Not all deal in the funnel will get signed and the funnel value can be made more realistic by weighting individual deals with the probability of completion. If you are not sure, then deals near the start of the funnel may be given a weaker weighting than those nearing closure.
Arrival rate
Arrival rate is the number of deals being qualified into the funnel in a given period. This can be expressed both in terms of numbers and potential value. These can be used to estimate sales effort and cash flow.
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the ratio of deals that are closed to deal that enter the funnel, and gives a measure of the success of both the qualifying-in process and the sales process. 100% conversion rate means all deals which are qualified in get converted into sales, which of course is ideal but unlikely.
Flow rate
The flow rate measures the time that deals are sitting in the funnel. This can be measured as both an average and also a spread, for example with the maximum and minimum in-funnel time.
Within this you often find that there are several 'stuck deals'. These may be separated out and dealt with separately to prevent them skewing the rest of the data.
Qualifying requires discovery of the answers to five key questions:
• Need: Could they use and find value in what you are selling?
• Value: Who gets what? Is it worth it?
• Resource: Can they afford it? Can we?
• Person: Are you talking with the right person or people?
• Readiness: How ready are they to buy?
Whilst there is an approximate sequence to these steps, in practice determining the answers may be a highly parallel activity.
Qualifying the need
If you want a high conversion rate of qualified-in prospects to sales, then you may tighten up the first question in particular. The next question here, then, is whether they have a conscious need for your product (or something similar) or whether you will have to stimulate that need.
If they come to you, then they most likely have a conscious need -- although you may still want to question them on this. Sometimes people think they need something when they would be better served by something else.
If they do not have a clear conscious need, then your first job is to discover that need. If you are selling paper-clips, then you will need to find out if if it would be useful for them to attach pages together. It is important for you to know all benefits of your product, especially in comparison with competing products, thus the paper-clip sales person should also ask about the need to separate attached pages -- something you can easily do with paper clips but not with staples.
Qualifying the value
Any deal has value for three people, and for long-term sales all three need to get enough to keep them in the game. Value is defined as a balance between benefits gained and all costs and troubles incurred in gaining those benefits.
Customers, of course, seek value, but so also does your employer and indeed you. Qualifying the value thus needs all three to be considered. If your customers are not going to find value then they will qualify themselves out of the funnel before the close (or otherwise destroy your value). If your employer is not going to get value it will affect you, sooner or later. And of course if it is not worth your time then you may choose to seek bigger fish.
Qualifying the resource
When you know that there is enough value in the deal to make it worthwhile, the next question is whether everyone can afford it.
Even if the potential customer is wildly enthusiastic about your product, if they cannot pay then you will be wasting your time. Of course there are ways to reduce and spread price over time, and you need to take this into consideration. It is not surprising that one of the first question many sales people as is 'How much are you looking to spend today?'
You also need to take into account your resource. Consider how much time and cost will be required to close the deal. Consider your employer's resource too, for example what resources that you share with other sales people you might need.
Qualifying the person
Qualifying the person with whom you are talking is an important additional step, as they may not have the authority to make the purchase decision. If, however, they can bring in the relevant other people or otherwise give you access to them, then you may be in business.
Customers often have to justify their purchases within their own organizations and thus may need to engage advisors, supporters, gatekeepers and resource-holders in what may be called a 'buying team' (although they do not always act like a cohesive team). Even in retail sales, other members of the family may need to be engaged. Advisors, such as technical experts, provide additional information about usability, potential problems, alternatives and so on. Supporters, such as senior sponsors and users, lend their weight to the argument. Gatekeepers, such as personal assistants and managers, can prevent you from reaching people and other resources. Finally, resource-holders can say 'yes' to spending money and allocating people that will enable you to close the deal.
Sales thus can require orchestration of many people, and qualifying in the deal requires consideration and agreement that these people will be available.
Qualifying readiness
The final element of qualification is readiness. Readiness is an important test that lets you know whether the potential customer has sufficient desire for your product and is otherwise ready to sign the deal. This can range from desperation to doubt to downright opposition.
The whole buying team needs to be considered here, as all it takes is one person to scupper the deal. When you understand this 'readiness landscape', however, even sketchily, you will have a much better idea of whether the deal is worth pursuing.
Sequential requests are a class of persuasive methods that depend on requests and persuasive statements being carried out in a specific sequence. A number of these, in particular FITD/DITF, have receive particular academic attention.
• Foot In The Door (FITD): Make small offer then increase.
• Door In The Face (DITF): Cause rejection then make real offer.
• Bait-and-switch: Great offer that never happens.
• Low-ball: Make it attractive, then make it real.
• That's not all (TNA): Add a string of benefits.
• Disrupt-then-reframe (DTR): Break the pattern then rebuild differently.
• Fear-then-relief (FTR): Scare them then rescue them.
• Selling the top of the line (TOTL): First promote an expensive product. Then show them a cheaper product.
• Dump and Chase (DAC): Provoke objections then negotiate on them.
Description
Ask for something small.
When they give it to you, then ask for something bigger.
And maybe then something bigger again.
Example
A person in the street asks me directions, which I give. They then ask me to walk a little way with them to make sure they don't get lost. In the end, I take them all the way to their destination.
Dad, can I go out for an hour to see Sam? [answer yes]
...I just called Sam and he's going to the cinema - can I go with him?
...I haven't got money -- could you lend me enough to get in?
...Could you give us a lift there?
...Could you pick us up after?
Discussion
FITD works by first getting a small yes and then getting an even better yes.
The principle involved is that a small agreement creates a bond between the requester and the requestee. The other person has to justify their agreement to themself. They cannot use the first request as something significant, so they have to convince themself that it is because they are nice and like the requester or that they actually are interested in the item being requested. In a future request, they then feel obliged to act consistently with their internal explanation they have built.
Freedman and Fraser (1966) asked people to either sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked by a second person to put a large sign advocating safe driving in their front yard. Many people who agreed to the first request now complied with the second, far more intrusive request.
The Freedman and Fraser study showed significant effect. later studies showed that the actual effect was more often far less.
The most powerful effect occurs when the person's self-image is aligned with the request. Requests thus need to be kept close to issues that the person is likely to support, such as helping other people. It is also affected by individual need for consistency.
Pro-social requests also increase likelihood of success with this method. It is also more likely to succeed when the second request is an extension of the first request (as opposed to being something completely different).
The Foot-in-the-door technique is a 'sequential request'.
Note also that 'foot in the door' is also used as a generic term to describe where early sales are relatively unprofitable (maybe a 'loss leader'), as the key purpose is to enable a relationship to be developed whereby further and more profitable sales may be completed.
Description
When we do a person a favor, we tend to like them more as a result. This is because we justify our actions to ourselves that we did them a favor because we liked them.
Benjamin Franklin himself said, "He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged."
The reverse effect is also true, and we come to hate our victims, which helps to explain wartime atrocities. We de-humanize the enemy, which decrease the dissonance of killing and other things in which we would never normally indulge.
Research
Jecker and Landy (1969) involved students in an intellectual contest where they could win significant money. Afterwards:
• A: 1/3 were approached by the researcher and asked to return money as he had been using his own funds and was running short.
• B: 1/3 were approached by a secretary and asked to return money as it was from the psychology department and funds were low.
• C: 1/3 were not approached.
Then all were surveyed to see how much they liked the researcher. Group B rated him lower than Group C (so impersonal request for a favor decreases liking). Group A rated him higher than group C (so personal request for a favor increases liking).
Description
Offer them something that appears to be very good value. This should be a real bargain, an offer they can't possibly refuse, even if they were not thinking about it.
Later, replace the item with something of less value to them (and more profit to you).
Example
A car sales showroom puts a basic car outside with a very low price-tag. Once the customer is interested, the sales person trades them up to a more expensive model.
Would you like to go out to this really expensive restaurant? ... Oh dear, it's booked up. Never mind, we can go to the usual place.
Discussion
When the person sees the initial item of high value they cognitively close on the idea of acquiring it and hence The early bait thus moves them from a negative position to one of commitment.
When the high value item is removed, then they enter a state of anxiety in which they seek to re-enter the comfortable closed state. They thus seek to satisfice, accepting almost any solution that will get them back to that comfortable state.
There may also be an element of commitment to the person making the offer. If I offer something to you, you feel some obligation to me. If I then switch the offer, especially if the switching seems reasonable, then you are likely to accept the second offer out of a sense of obligation to me. To do otherwise would expose myself as inconsistent and break bonding between us.
Although common in sales, this method was first researched by Joule, Gouilloux, and Weber (1989), who called it the lure procedure. They invited students to watch interesting film clips (and hence got a lot of volunteers), but then switched the task to memorizing lists of numbers. In the control group that was just asked to help by memorizing numbers (no initial film-clip offer), only 15% agreed, as opposed to 47% who had been first offered the film-clip experiment.
The bait and switch technique is a 'sequential request'.
Principle
if I do something for you, they you are obliged to do something for me.
How it Works
Have you ever had someone come up to you in the street and give you something, perhaps a flower or even a book? How kind. But then they ask for a donation to their cause, and you feel that as they have given something to you, then you really ought to give something back.
Value exchange
Exchange is a game of balance. I help you then you help me then I help you, and so on.
What we exchange is not so much distinct things as perceived value. If I have something that I do not value very highly but you do, then it is a useful thing for exchange.
Exchanges are not necessarily financial or physical in nature. Emotional exchanges, which we use a great deal of the time, can be of surprising value. When I take my daughter to a pop concert, a smile and a hug is more than adequate payment. A simple thanks is all many want for much of their hard work on behalf of others.
Trust = delayed exchange
A simple definition of trust is 'delayed exchange'. I will do something for you today without asking for something in return. I must thus trust that you will repay the favor some time in the future.
Without trust, exchange is confined either to an immediate exchange or else a trusted third party must be utilized. Third party 'trust brokers' are more common than might be imagined. For example, a major function of banks, lawyers and friends are to act between us and others who we may not trust.
Social pressure
Breaking the exchange principle in a group can be a heinous crime, punishable by ostracizing or even expulsion. The fear of such penalties is more than enough to keep many people on the straight and narrow.
The bank account
Exchange is something like a bank account. Sometimes I put things in, sometimes I take things out. I can thus invest in helping others today so I know I can call on them in my hour of need.
Social capital
The idea of social capital is that when there is a high level of trust within a social group (which can be a large as an entire country), then we will help people we do not know, in the confident knowledge that others who we do not know will also help us. It is like we all have one big joint bank account.
We may need some help with the trust thing in such situations. What if someone takes advantage and asks for too much? This is where laws, trusted brokers and so on start to creep into the picture.
The golden rule
The biblical Golden Rule says 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' Oh look: exchange. And social balance. Although others might not like the same as us, it is a simple rule which guides many decisions in an equitable fashion.
Upsetting the balance
Exchange rules are based on long-term relationships, where the balance of exchange evens out over time. However, we are programmed by these rules to the point where we will obey them even in shorter-term and low-trust exchanges.
Give and take
If I give you something, then there is a social rule that says I can ask you for pretty much anything in exchange. Cults use this when they demand absolute obedience (and all the worldly wealth) of their devotees.
One of the tricks of unbalancing exchange is to make what you are offering very desirable, for example by using scarcity or other principles to jack up the value.
Number vs. quantity
If I do three things for you and you do something of equivalent value all in one go, does that make us even? Unfortunately not. The equations of exchange are not that linear. We often confuse quantity of occurrences with quantity of time.
So what
Companies and shops will give you free samples, which then encourages you to buy the full product in return.
Leaders will grant favors to their followers. These can be small strokes of attention in payment for what may be significant efforts. By giving out their attention in many, small packets, they can create a remarkable imbalance, yet still have their followers loving them unquestioningly.
If you don't have enough Christmas cards, try sending cards to total strangers. A surprising number will send you one back (and even add you to their regular Christmas list).
Politics is rife with 'logrolling' and the exchange of favors. It is one reason why laws can get strangely convoluted as modifications to suit just a single person get woven into the wording.
A variation of this is used by sales people who make cold calls and (naturally) get rejected. After the rejection, they can ask to be recommended to someone else. They can then leverage the liking principle by saying to the next person 'John said that you would be really interested...'.
Description
The more we have similar attitudes to other people, the more we are attracted by them. This is a pretty linear relationship. 'Birds of a feather flock together' much more than 'Opposites attract'.
Research
Byrne (1971) asked people to complete a questionnaire on their personal characteristics. The people were then shown (fabricated) descriptions of a range of different people and asked how they felt towards them. Those with characteristics similar to the person being studied were rated as more attractive.
Example
Professional societies, religious groups, sports clubs. All are opportunities for birds of a feather to find one another.
So what?
Description
As relationships develop, they penetrate deeper and deeper into private and personal matters. This exposes vulnerabilities, so trust has to be developed along the way.
Penetration goes through a number of stages.
1. Orientation stage. Here, we play safe with small talk and simple, harmless clichés like ‘Life’s like that’, following standards of social desirability and norms of appropriateness.
2. Exploratory affective stage. We now start to reveal ourselves, expressing personal attitudes about moderate topics such as government and education. This may not be the whole truth as we are not yet comfortable to lay ourselves bare. We are still feeling our way forward. This is the stage of casual friendship, and many relationships do not go past this stage.
3. Affective stage. Now we start to talk about private and personal matters. We may use personal idioms. Criticism and arguments may arise. There may be intimate touching and kissing at this stage.
4. Stable stage. The relationship now reaches a plateau in which personal things are shared and each can predict the emotional reactions of the other person.
5. Depenetration. When the relationship starts to break down and costs exceed benefits, then there is a withdrawal of disclosure which leads to termination of the relationship.
Description
Stage theories in general describe how we go through distinct stages as we develop. Thus, rather than gradually changing, we typically make sudden shifts to different plateaus of perception and behavior. This may be associated with 'aha's of sudden understanding.
Levinger's Relationship Stage Theory
Relationships go through a series of stages as they mature. Levinger's model has ABCDE stages.
A = Acquaintance/attraction. We meet other people and feel an initial attraction, often based on physical beauty and similarity.
B = Build-up. We become increasingly interdependent as we reveal more and more about our private selves. We get irritated by one another, but the more pleasant aspects may well keep the relationship going.
C = Continuation/consolidation. Longer-term commitments are made, such as marriage. The partnership enters what may be a life-long stable relationship.
D = Deterioration. Many relationships decay, due to several factors. These include relative effort, rewards, barriers to exit (such as marriage and social obligation) and the availability of alternatives.
E = Ending. The relationship ends when partners agree to separate or one leaves.
Here are academic theories about how we make sense of the other people, inferring meaning about them.
Attributing cause
• Actor-Observer Difference: we see others' behavior caused by disposition, ours by situation.
• Correspondence Bias: We over-estimate dispositional factors over situational factors.
• Correspondent Inference Theory: we assume unusual acts are due to disposition
• Covariation Model: we look for similarities to narrow down attribution in others.
• Fundamental Attribution Error: we overestimate dispositional factors.
• Positivity Effect: we make situational attribution for those we like.
• Scapegoat Theory: we like having someone else to blame.
Expecting certain behaviors
• Dilution Effect: information about others reduces stereotyping.
• Expectancy Violations Theory: we have expectations of others' behavior, eg. body space.
• False Consensus Effect: we overestimate how much people agree with us.
• Halo Effect: we generalize judgment across traits.
• Implicit Personality Theory: we generalize expectation from a few central. traits.
• Interpersonal Expectancy Effect: Action is based on how we expect others to behave.
• Interview Illusion: after a quick discussion, we believe we can predict many behaviors.
• Out-Group Homogeneity: we see out-group people as 'all the same'.
• Stereotypes: we classify people in broad groups.
• Social Exchange Theory: comparing give and take in relationships.
• Outcome Dependency: we are optimistic about others when we need them to cooperate.
• Reciprocity Norm: expecting others to return our favors.
• Ultimate Attribution Error: we assume broad groups have similar disposition.
Other stuff
• Illusion of asymmetric insight: We think we understand others better than they understand us.
• Language Expectancy Theory: we are shocked by unexpected language.
• Repulsion Hypothesis: we dislike people who are very different from us.
• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: we language reality into existence.
Description
First make what you want the other person to agree to easy to accept by making it quick, cheap, easy, etc.
Maximize their buy-in, in particular by getting both verbal and public commitment to this.
Make it clear that they are agreeing to this of their own free will.
Then change the agreement to what you really want. The other person may complain, but, if the low-ball is done correctly they should agree to the change.
The trick of a successful low-ball is in the balance of making the initial request attractive enough to gain agreement, whilst not making the second request so outrageous that the other person refuses. It nevertheless is surprising how great a difference there can be between these two requests.
Example
A person agrees to buy a car at a low price. The sales person then apologizes that the wrong price was on the car. The person still agrees to buy it at the higher price.
A family books a package holiday. They find that there are surcharges. They pay these without question.
Discussion
The Low-ball works by first gaining closure and commitment to the idea or item which you want the other person to accept, then using the fact that people will behave consistently with their beliefs to sustain the commitment when you change the agreement.
There is also an illusion of irrevocability whereby a person believes that a decision made cannot be reversed, for example when a person agrees to buy a car and considers the handshake as the final transaction (as opposed to handing over the money).
Agreeing to a low price creates excitement and not buying after this state is induced may lead to an equally deep depression, which the person may avoid by continuing with the more expensive purchase.
When the final price is not that much higher than elsewhere, the person weighs up the inconvenience of going elsewhere with the short-term benefit of holding their purchase very soon.
Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, and Miller (1978) asked students to participate in an experiment. The control group was told during the request that it would be at 7am. The low-ball group was only told this later. 24% of the control group agreed to this, whilst 56% of the low-ball group agreed (and 95% of these actually turned up).
Guéguen and Pascual (2000) found it to be important that the person believes that they have made a free and non-coerced agreement to the first request. In particular adding 'but you are free to accept or to refuse' to the first request increased compliance.
Burger and Petty (1981) showed that the same person must make both requests.
The Low-ball technique is a 'sequential request'.
Description
When offering or conceding something to somebody, rather than give it to them as a final item, give it in incremental pieces. Do not allow them to respond to each piece you give them -- keep on offering more.
Thus, for example, you can:
• Offer a discount in several stages.
• Add extra 'gifts' to a product offering.
• Start with a high price and reduce it.
• Tell them all the things you are going to do, one at a time.
The increments can be in different amounts, but each should surprise and delight the person. It can also help if the final increment is particularly desirable.
Example
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not only going to reduce this by 10%, not even by 20% and not even by 40%. Today, ladies and gentlemen, the price is reduced for you by a whopping 50%!
I'm not going to give you this cookie cutter. No. That's not all I'm going to give you. For the same price, I'm going to throw in a fine steel spatula. A bargain I hear you say? But I'm going to make it even better, with this splendid temperature probe, absolutely free. Now, who wants this wonderful offer now?
Mr Jones, you've been treated badly and I'm going to make sure you're ok today. First, I'm going to call the service team. Then I'm going to talk to the manager and then I'll get him to call you today. Is this ok for you?
Discussion
This technique is reminiscent of the highball tactic in that it starts with high and comes down. The only difference is that the 'that's not all' method does not do this in negotiated concessions.
It can, however, seem like a negotiation. Burger (1986) found that this technique works partly because a customer sees the salesperson as entering into a type of negotiation by offering an additional product. With each increment, the customer feels an increasing obligation to purchase the product in return for the salesperson's 'concessions'.
In Burger's experiment, he sold a cupcake with two cookies together for 75 cents (this was the control) or stated the price of cupcake was 75 cents and then added two cookies 'for free' (TNA). Successful sales in the control were 40%, whilst in the TNA case they were 73%.
In a second experiment, Burger showed it going the other way, either selling the cupcakes straight for 75 cents (the control) or starting at one dollar and then immediately discounting to 75 cents (the TNA case). Successful sales in the control were 44% whilst in the TNA case were again 73%.
The method depends largely on an automatic social response and hence works better when the customer does not have time to think hard about what is going on.
Description
Make a statement that goes off the normal track of how the other person thinks. Then make a rational-sounding statement that makes apparent sense and leads the other person to agree to your request.
This is typically done in a single speech, effectively disrupting and reframing your own statements.
The principle can also be used in disrupting the other person, breaking into their speech and reinterpret what they are saying to indicate something else. This is best done when they are in the middle of talking and are in a state of 'flow', effectively trotting out a familiar script on the subject.
The disruption can even be something nonsensical -- the key is that it breaks a pattern and readies them for something else.
Example
Davis and Knowles told customers that a package of eight cards sold for $3.00, and subsequently made sales to approximately 40% of customers. When they told customers that "the price of eight cards is 300 pennies, which is a bargain", then sales doubled to 80% of customers.
Them: You know I hate it when you...
You: Marakanas!...I hate it when we don't get on. So let's try again?
Discussion
Davis and Knowles based this approach on a study of hypnotist Milton Erikson's methods whereby he would deliberately disrupt thinking and behaving and hence destabilize his patients' habitual patterns and then change that thinking whilst the patient was still unsure what to think next.
This method uses the principle of confusion to unfreeze the person and then uses reframing in a hurt and rescue route to closure.
In their 'pennies' example, the use of '300 pennies' is a disruption of the normal '3 dollars'. Whilst the person is trying to figure out what this means, the reframe 'which is a bargain' is slipped in as an explanation, which many people accept and hence conclude that it is worth purchasing before they decide that 300 pennies is really $3, which is not worth paying.
Rather than use standard persuasive pressure, as in traditional one-off selling, it acts more subtly to create alternative forms of tension that are literally doubly (as in Davis and Knowles' experiment) as effective. The aim is thus to reduce avoidance rather than focus first on increasing attractiveness.
The persuader thus becomes a trusted supporter rather than an oppositional enforcer, which supports future persuasion as in relationship selling or collaborative negotiation.
Fennis, Das and Pruyn extended this principle to show that this disruption and reframing approach was applicable across a wider range of settings. Specifically, the Disrupt-Then-Reframe technique reduced the extent of objections and counter-argument to a sales script and boosted the impact of questioning and alignment methods.
The technique is often abbreviated simply to DTR, and can be used to describe a range of techniques that use the same basic disrupt-reframe principle.
Description
Invoke fear in the other person. Then, when they seek a solution, provide one that leads them in the direction you choose.
Fear is invoked by threatening needs. Relief may be gained by doing what you request. Relief may also given 'freely' to create trust and invoke the rules of social exchange.
Be careful not to be seen as an aggressor, for example by using external sources to invoke the fear.
Also be careful not to invoke so much fear that they flee from you or become aggressive.
Example
Your performance has been below standard recently and you may be placed on the 'at risk' register. I won't do this now but I do want you to show me what you are capable of.
The boss came around when you were out and asked where you were. Don't worry, I gave a good excuse. Could you cover for me? I want to go home early.
Discussion
This is a direct application of the hurt and rescue principle, creating discomfort and then providing the means of reducing that discomfort. Whilst a relatively crude method, it is still quite common and often effective when done well.
This works as the pleasant relief is linked with the second request, which receives the pleasant emotion by association. In the state of blessed relief the person may also be temporarily unthinking as the strong emotion overwhelms any rational consideration.
Repeated fear-relief cycles can be emotionally very exhausting and is used in such as interrogation and conversion to break a person down. When a person thinks they are rescued from a fearful situation, they relax and drop their guard, making the next wave even more terrifying as they are less and less able to emotional defend against it.
Invoking fear can be hazardous as it may well trigger the Fight-or-Flight reaction. Particularly when the persuader is seen as the primary cause of the discomfort, they may become the target of aggression and compliance will become very unlikely. One way this can be handled is that the persuader pleads innocence or unintentional action, which leader the aggressor into apology and compliance as a way of restoring social harmony.
Description
First promote an expensive product. Then show them a cheaper product.
This can be done without really trying to sell the expensive product. Do it as if you are just a kind of product geek who is proud of what can be done and want to show off great products. Then become the friend who sells them a product that suits them best.
You can also try to sell the expensive product if they seem to be interested. Expensive products are sought by the affluent and those who value the social kudos the product gives. If they seem like the latter, add 'what people will say' into your patter.
If they reject the expensive product, then it is a simple step to move down to the cheaper product.
Example
Just look at this wonderful washing machine, it has many different cycles and controls...It is a bit expensive - but this other machine does almost as much and is 30% less.
Discussion
Selling the top of the line' is a common approach that is a variant of the Door In The Face (DITF) method.
Acting as a 'product geek' in showing off the more expensive item establishes the sales person as an expert and can help to build trust. Note that serious attempts to sell the expensive product may negate or even invert these effects.
The more expensive product creates desire, but cannot be afforded. The second product hooks into the created desire with something that is closer to the buyers budget. The method uses the contrast principle to make the second product appear relatively inexpensive.
The exchange principle also applies as the sales person is giving up a higher sale in apparent concern for the customer, who reciprocates the favor by buying the product.
Donoho (2003) showed 290 business majors different videos designed to sell CD players. Some were shown a 'top of the line' video, showing first an expensive product followed by a less expensive product. Others were shown products in different orders. The 'top of the line' video resulted in 'purchases' of average 10% greater value.
Description
Ask for something. When they flatly refuse, ask why (or why not, depending on how the situation is phrased).
Then turn the discussion into a negotiation whereby you remove the reasons for them not agreeing with you or otherwise complying with your request.
Example
When a customer says they do not want buy a product, the sales person asks what is stopping them from buying today, and then proceeds to address their issues.
A boy wants to go out with his friends. His mother says 'no'. He asks why not and then gives reasons and evidence that outweigh the mother's reasons. In the end, she gives in.
Discussion
There are two forms of refusal: a flat refusal where no explanation is given and and 'obstacle' where reasons are given for refusing. People often present obstacles as this is a more polite form and less likely to result in reactive argument. However, this form also gives space for the persuader to continue persuading.
Persistence by the persuader allows them to wear down the other person, who also may become convinced that this is an urgent and important matter for the persuader. The person may feel guilty in holding out when conceding is not that important for them, or become sympathetic to their need.
This method pulls on the needs to explain, effectively forcing the other person to give reason, which also enables the persuader to continue.
'Dump and chase' is also a strategy in ice hockey whereby a team hits the puck into the attacking zone, then aggressively tries to retrieve it (which is similar to 'kick and rush' in rugby union). This term was used
One of the most important stages of selling is closing the deal, which is the actions taken by the sales person to gain agreement to the sale. There are many closing techniques in sales, which are prescribed actions that sales people take to persuade the customer to make the necessary commitment. Here are some of these:
• 1-2-3 Close - close with the principle of three.
• Adjournment Close - give them time to think.
• Affordable Close - ensuring people can afford what you are selling.
• Alternative Close - offering a limited set of choices.
• Artisan Close - show the skill of the designer.
• Ask-the-Manager Close - use manager as authority.
• Assumptive Close - acting as if they are ready to decide.
• Balance-sheet Close - adding up the pros and the cons.
• Best-time Close - emphasize how now is the best time to buy.
• Bonus Close - offer delighter to clinch the deal.
• Bracket Close - make three offers - with the target in the middle.
• Calculator Close - use calculator to do discount.
• Calendar Close - put it in the diary.
• Companion Close - sell to the person with them.
• Compliment Close - flatter them into submission.
• Concession Close - give them a concession in exchange for the close.
• Conditional Close - link closure to resolving objections.
• Cost of Ownership Close - compare cost over time with competitors.
• Courtship Close - woo them to the close.
• Customer-care Close - the Customer Care Manager calls later and re-opens the conversation.
• Daily Cost Close - reduce cost to daily amount.
• Demonstration Close - show them the goods.
• Distraction Close - catch them in a weak moment.
• Doubt Close - show you doubt the product and let them disagree.
• Economic Close - help them pay less for what they get.
• Embarrassment Close - make not buying embarrassing.
• Emotion Close - trigger identified emotions.
• Empathy Close - empathize with them, then sell to your new friend.
• Empty-offer Close - make them an empty offer that the sale fills.
• Exclusivity Close - not everyone can buy this.
• Extra Information Close - give them more info to tip them into closure.
• Fire Sale Close - soiled goods, going cheap.
• Future Close - close on a future date.
• Give-Take Close - give something, then take it away.
• Golden Bridge Close - make the only option attractive.
• Handover Close - someone else does the final close.
• Handshake Close - offer handshake to trigger automatic reciprocation.
• Humor Close - relax them with humor.
• Hurry Close - go fast to stop them thinking too much.
• IQ Close - say how this is for intelligent people.
• Minor points Close - close first on the small things.
• Never-the-best-time Close - for customers who are delaying.
• No-hassle Close - make it as easy as possible.
• Now-or-never Close - to hurry things up.
• Opportunity Cost Close - show cost of not buying.
• Ownership Close - act as if they own what you are selling.
• Price-promise Close - promise to meet any other price.
• Puppy Close - acting cute to invoke sympathy and a nurturing response.
• Quality Close - sell on quality, not on price.
• Rational Close - use logic and reason.
• Repetition Close - repeat a closing action several times.
• Retrial Close - go back to square one.
• Reversal Close - act as if you do not want them to buy the product.
• Save-the-world close: - buy now and help save the world.
• Selective-deafness Close - respond only to what you want to hear.
• Shame Close - make not buying shameful.
• Shopping List Close - tick off list of their needs.
• Similarity Close - bond them to a person in a story.
• Standing-room-only Close - show how others are queuing up to buy.
• Summary Close - tell them all the things they are going to receive.
• Testimonial Close - use a happy customer to convince the new customer.
• Thermometer Close - they score out of ten, you close gap.
• Think About It Close - give them time to think about it.
• Treat Close - persuade them to 'give themselves a treat'.
• Trial Close - see if they are ready for a close.
• Valuable Customer Close - offer them a special 'valued customer' deal.
• Ultimatum Close - show negative consequences of not buying.
• Yes-set Close - get them saying 'yes' and they'll keep saying 'yes'.
This is a big list, but the real list of closing techniques is almost endless. You can go to each need, for example, and invent several closes around satisfying or threatening them. Here are closing tips to help you further.
'Sell on the tangibles, close on the intangibles' is good general advice. Note how many of these methods follow this rule.
Don't forget the caveat in all of this. If people feel tricked or otherwise betrayed, they will not only not buy from you now, they may well never buy from you ever again or even turn all their friends against you. In particular beware of using unsubtle techniques with professional buyers, who can usually see them coming from miles away.
Sales is a complex task and very much at the sharp end of changing minds, even when they do not particularly want to be changed. Here are some articles that did not fit elsewhere, but which have some very useful tools for you.
• A Selling Attitude: How you think = how you succeed.
• Bosworth's ten pains: Common problems around selling.
• Buying signals: Spotting when they are ready to buy.
• Closing tips: To help you achieve the sale.
• Customer Personalities: five different types of customer you will face.
• Customer Roles: People you may meet in the customer organization.
• Dealing with No: How to withstand the body blow of refusal.
• Features and benefits: A FAB difference.
• Getting referrals: How to get the best leads.
• Listing benefits: How to do it properly.
• LOCATE: How to understand your customers.
• The personal-closure trap: Never close yourself before the customer.
• The sales funnel: Filtering down customers to the final close.
• Sales funnel metrics: Ways of assessing the health of your sales funnel.
• Sales Training: Practical ideas about sales training.
• Sales Wisdom: A collection of useful tips about selling.
• Selling with Questions: how to sell by asking instead of telling.
• Sustaining commitment: Preventing backtracking.
• System selling: Sell a system to a system.
• Three Customer Types: All of whom you may have to persuade.
• Three rules of appearance: Look the part. Get the sale.
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Know why you are special.
• Using referrals: Making use of the best leads you can get.
• What salespeople need to know: A useful checklist.
Good selling requires that you understand the product well and work to appreciate the customer's requirement. But before and beyond all that, the secret of a good salesperson is about what goes on inside their head.
Above all, selling is an attitude. It's how you think and feel. It's about your whole approach to yourself, your company, your products and, of course, your customers. All of this can be condensed to three words: Confidence, pride and care.
Confidence
The basis of all successful selling is confidence. This does not mean blind hope -- it is more about how you think about yourself and the future.
Self-belief
A confident person believes in themself and their abilities to sell. In order to create trust, the first thing that you sell is yourself. Whilst self-belief does not guarantee a sale, it always increases the probability of success.
If you go into a selling situation and you do not even believe in yourself, then you are doomed to failure. If you do not believe in yourself then the customer will not believe in you either, nor will they believe what you say. Your doubt will become their doubt and doubt does not lead to the sale.
Informed optimism
Blind belief is not always a good thing. Being positive because you have studied the product and the customer is greater reason to be confident. Belief and optimism provide powerful support but they do not replace factual knowledge.
If you are ready to sell, with good information at your fingertips, them you have good reason to be optimistic. Even if you do not have complete information (and who does), a tendency to optimism also helps create a positive attitude.
Can-do
Finally, self-belief and an optimistic approach lead to a 'can-do' attitude which means you will get out there and create the sale through your thoughts and actions. Belief is not enough: you've got to put in the work too.
Pride
There are two forms of pride. As one of the seven deadly sins, it can be a very selfish thing. But pride placed outside yourself is an important attitude that communicates and transmits itself to your customers.
Pride in the company
First, you should be proud to work at your company. Associating yourself with the brand and the brand values should make you feel good. You should be happy to tell others where you work.
Pride in the product
Secondly, you should be proud of what you are selling. Just thinking that you have the privilege of selling such a fine product should make you very happy indeed.
As with pride in the company, an intrinsic pride in the product is a powerful motivator, both for you and for your customer.
Care
Finally, a selling attitude is a caring attitude. Rather than just dump products on customers, if you want them to ever come back again, you should care about them and their problems, and hence be proud of how your products will help.
Care for customers can include taking time out from the normal selling context to check up on them, that the product is working ok and that they are happy with it. It can even include sending them Christmas and birthday cards -- to their partner too.
When others know that you care about them, personally, then they will be far more willing to trust you -- and trust is the first doorway towards selling.
In his book 'Solution Selling', Michael Bosworth describes '10 faces of Buyer Pain' that illustrate the extent of problems that sales people may face.
1. Latent need
The buyer has a latent need that the sales person seeks to uncover and hence sell the solution into that need.
The buyer may not easily expose that need, perhaps because it is seen as a weakness or perhaps because they have already cast it as unsolvable and therefore not worth mentioning.
2. Price negotiation
The buyer is aware of the sales person's need to meet quota and uses this as a negotiating lever, for example by offering a big purchase just before the end of the quarter, but only if a significant discount is given.
3. Cold call 'window of opportunity'
Most sale people detest cold calling above all other activities. The telephone is a poor instrument for communication and it is easy to get it wrong and even easier for the buyer to hang up.
4. Organizational interdependence and access to power
Some buyers have little authority to make the actual purchase and depend on an internal person to make the purchase decision.
Sales people know this and put much effort into finding out who the real decisions-makers are and gaining access to them so they can sell to the real power brokers.
5. Product or service viewed as 'commodity'
Buyers may well believe that the seller's products or services are essentially commodities and that the same thing can be bought from a number of alternative suppliers.
Sales people thus have to present themselves, their companies and their products as differentiated in some way that makes them more desirable than competing offers.
6. Requests for proposal
Big companies may issue 'RFP's, where a requirement is sent out to a number of potential suppliers and a quote requested in terms of what will be delivered and how much it will cost.
Often the RFP is judged against criteria to create a short-list. Companies from this list may then be invited to make presentations which are then judged further by rational means.
The sales person thus is unable to sell in the normal interactive manner.
7. Free education
Sales people can provide very useful information about advances in products and the state of the industry (including their competitors). Buyers know this and may invite sales presentations with no intention of purchase. Their goal is simply to get the sales person to provide them with a free education.
Sales people thus need to detect this situation as early as possible to avoid wasting time.
8. Buyer gets cold feet
Buyers can take the sales process right up to the wire and then get cold feet as they realize that they are taking risks in that the purchased item may not be sufficient for the task.
Sales people sometimes use this tendency to compete with one another, pointing out disadvantages of competing solutions. This is particularly common with larger suppliers and IBM famously sold equipment in the 1970s with the implied line 'Nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM'.
9. Booking appointments over the phone
One of the key goals of cold calling is to get an appointment to make a face-to-face sales presentation or otherwise move the sale forward. This can be very difficult for the sales person.
10. Buyer has been to negotiating school
Many professional buyers are trained in sales and negotiation methods and can spot sales techniques a mile off. They will negotiate hard and use all kinds of methods to batter the price down and the solution up.
Whilst the buyer can use aggressive methods, the sales person needs to sustain a working relationship and thus is limited by this approach.
In marketing and sales promotions it is easy to miss a key trick, which is to make what you are selling stand out against the competition, making your products clearly the best choice. This is the key focus of the USP, also sometimes said to stand for 'Unique Selling Point'.
How to create a USP
Get into their heads
Customers do not just look at your products and decide whether they want it or not. They may have lists of desired features or problems that are resolved by the benefits that are conferred by buying the product.
Beyond this, when looking at your product they compare what you have to offer with that which they can buy from your competitors.
Select the key variables
The USP typically focuses on specific variables, such as speed, size, convenience, safety, style or ease of use. It does not focus on price or (by definition) value for money.
The USP says what is different about the product, particularly in comparison with major competitors. Thus you can take a range of variables and produce a table to find out where you are better or worse than competitors.
Do the research
Do not just pick a factor about your product that seems strong to you. Do your research properly. Find out what criteria customers use to compare products against one another. Get their metrics and measurement systems (good customers will happily give you this as it probably means better products from you).
Buy your competitors' products and do a scientific comparison. Better still, get an independent agency to do this, so you can quote them in promotions. Customer surveys also help.
Half the lifetime costs. Twice the reliability. (and don't just take our word for it...)
Position yourself
With the USP you need to position your product not just against the customer's needs but also against competing products. The USP thus explains what is unique about what you have to sell.
The RG Amplifier is the only amplifier that uses three-stage filters to give you a cleaner, more powerful sound.
Use comparison words
Positioning against a competitor can often be done using words that compare, such as better, faster, stronger and so on.
History
The USP was originally discussed in the 1940s and defined in print by advertising executive Rosser Reeves, who was concerned that advertising was losing track of its purpose in the way it was become more about art and less about selling the product. He said:
Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: 'Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.'
The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique-either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions; i.e., pull over new customers to your product.
-- Reeves, 1961
The most common description of power is French and Raven (1960). This divides power into five different forms.
Coercive power
This is the power to force someone to do something against their will. It is often physical although other threats may be used. It is the power of dictators, despots and bullies. Coercion can result in physical harm, although its principal goal is compliance. Demonstrations of harm are often used to illustrate what will happen if compliance is not gained.
Coercion is also the ultimate power of all governments. Although it is often seen as negative, it is also used to keep the peace. Parents coerce young children who know no better. A person holds back their friend who is about to step out in front of a car.
Other forms of power can also be used in coercive ways, such as when a reward or expertise is withheld or referent power is used to threaten social exclusion.
Reward power
One of the main reasons we work is for the money we need to conduct our lives. There are many more forms of reward -- in fact anything we find desirable can be a reward, from a million dollar yacht to a pat on the back.
Reward power is thus the ability to give other people what they want, and hence ask them to do things for you in exchange.
Rewards can also be used to punish, such as when they are withheld. The promise is essentially the same: do this and you will get that.
Legitimate power
Legitimate power is that which is invested in a role. Kings, policemen and managers all have legitimate power. The legitimacy may come from a higher power, often one with coercive power. Legitimate power can often thus be the acceptable face of raw power.
A common trap that people in such roles can fall into is to forget that people are obeying the position, not them. When they either fall from power or move onto other things, it can be a puzzling surprise that people who used to fawn at your feet no long do so.
Referent power
This is the power from another person liking you or wanting to be like you. It is the power of charisma and fame and is wielded by all celebrities (by definition) as well as more local social leaders. In wanting to be like these people, we stand near them, hoping some of the charisma will rub off onto us.
Those with referent power can also use it for coercion. One of the things we fear most is social exclusion, and all it takes is a word from a social leader for us to be shunned by others in the group.
Expert power
When I have knowledge and skill that someone else requires, then I have Expert power. This is a very common form of power and is the basis for a very large proportion of human collaboration, including most companies where the principle of specialization allows large and complex enterprises to be undertaken.
Expert power is that which is used by Trades Unions when they encourage their members to strike for better pay or working conditions. It is also the power of the specialist R&D Engineer when they threaten to leave unless they get an exorbitant pay rise or a seat by the window.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a 17th century thinker who sought to apply the new methods of science and the Greek rigor of logic to sociology. In his 1660 masterwork, 'Leviathan', he describes power and promotes the notion of a commonwealth as an effective society.
Hobbes divided motivation into appetites and aversions, predating Freud and his pleasure-pain principle by a couple of centuries.
Naturall Power
Hobbes defined power as the ability to secure well-being or personal advantage 'to obtain some future apparent Good'. He saw people as having 'Naturall Power' that come from internal qualities such as intellectual eloquence, physical strength and prudence.
Instrumentall Power
He also noted that we have 'Instrumentall Power' which has the sole purpose of acquiring more power. This includes wealth, reputation and influential friends.
He thus saw the quest for power as the quest for command over the power of others. If I can get you to use your power on behalf of my purpose, then I can add your power to my arsenal. In its most simple form, we buy the compliance of others.
'The value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power.
Relative power
Hobbes noted that power is relative only to the power of others. If I have less power than you, then I am effectively powerless in your presence. This leads us to a perpetual power struggle with other people, each vying for ever greater power and each seeking to acquire the power of others.
He also noticed that there are some people who can never get enough power, and who seek to use others rather than cooperate and live in harmony with them. This he considered a dysfunction.
Ceding power
Hobbes found that many of us find a balance in life and gaining 'sufficient power' is adequate for us. We also seek to co-operate and share power with others to escape from an endless escalation.
'that a man be willing when others are so too, as farre-forth as for Peace and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down the right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe.'
He considered the most effective use of personal power in society is to cede it to a central authority who can use this power without question back on the people who give the power. This effectively leads to an elected monarch and commonwealth, which Hobbes called the 'Leviathan'.
The Leviathan, by the way, is monstrous and fearsome sea creature in the book of Job. Going against the Leviathan was an act of great peril.
Although there are many different types or power, there are a number of things that may be considered which will increase the power you have.
Scarcity
The Scarcity Principle makes anything that is not easily available more desirable. If the power I have is something that other people do not have, then I am the only wielder of this power and hence I can choose how it is used.
Desirability
If what I have is more desirable, then I can make greater demands, asking more for it and so on.
A negative form of this is where my power is undesirable, such as the power to punish. Again, the greater the undesirability of my power the stronger the power is (although it will create very different reactions to a positive and desirable thing).
Skill
Some people have power but are not good at wielding it. Like a swordsman with a sharp cutlass, a skilful user of power uses just enough to get what they want and no more.
Impact
If my power has a great impact on people, then they will pay greater attention to it. Thus a bank robber acquires great power (and money) from the use of a gun.
Acquisition cost
Sometimes power costs a great deal to acquire, such as expert power, for which takes time and money to get through college.
Burn rate
Power, when used, may be used up or it may retain its 'full strength'. Thus when a teacher shouts at a class, it will only work for a while and if they keep it up, before long the children will ignore the loud thing at the front of the class. A good teacher only needs to hint or raise an eyebrow.
The opposite of having power is powerlessness, which is a remarkably common illusion.
Self-image
Many people have a self-image of powerlessness, believing that they are not able to achieve anything. This may take the form of needing to ask for approval before taking any action (I am not authorized to decide). It may also come from a self image of being unable to achieve goals (I do not have the skill or knowledge to do anything).
A low self-image can thus have a cripplingly paralyzing on a person, preventing them from even beginning any action.
Fear of failure
Another root of powerlessness is the fear of failure. This is often based in the fear of persecution and rejection and may be related to the paranoid-schizoid position.
The person typically projects forward into the future, sees themselves failing and then continues to imagine others criticizing and ostracizing them. The illusion may continue into feelings of guilt, shame and loneliness.
Internal conflict
Internal conflict can lead to powerlessness, for example where a manager wants to discipline an employee but also wants to be liked -- the result can be a stasis of inaction.
When equal and opposite forces pull against one another, the net movement is zero. Internal conflict thus can create significant internal tension but no real movement.
The power of powerlessness
Curiously, powerlessness is a form of power. If I feel powerless, then this gives me the power to ask for help. I can be powerless like a child and hence demand help from an adult-figure.
Begging uses powerlessness to persuade.
Although the French and Raven list is common, here is a composite and extended list that is perhaps easier to use.
Ownership
If I own something then I can also use it in any way I like. If I own a chair I can set fire to it, which I couldn't do if I had borrowed it from you. If I own money, I can spend it any way I choose.
Position
Where you occupy a recognized position, then I will obey the rules regarding that position (rather than obeying you, per se).
Formal positions include managers, policemen, and so on. These may well have formal authority vested in them by the company or the country.
Informal positions also exist, such as social leaders or team roles such as the Belbin Team Types. If you hold a creative social position such as a 'plant' then I will listen carefully to your ideas.
Access control
Another form of ownership is where you are the gatekeeper to something that is desired. Bouncers at night clubs and company receptionists are gatekeepers to entire organizations. Personal assistants control access to the managers they serve. Librarians control access to knowledge.
Knowledge
Knowledge is power, as they say. If I know something, then I can use it to my advantage. Knowledge may come in several forms:
• Technical knowledge is knowing how things work. It is the power of experts and academics.
• Social knowledge is knowing things about people. This may include secrets that could be used for blackmail.
The degree of power that a knowledge user has depends even more than other forms of power on a supply and demand situation. If nobody wants the knowledge or cares about it, then there is little power. But if the world is being invaded by aliens and I know how to repel them, I can demand a high price for my services.
Skill
Skill is closely related to knowledge, but is the ability to do something rather than just know it.
As with knowledge, there is technical skill and social skill. Engineers have technical skills. Sales people have social skills, which include the ability to communicate and the ability to persuade others.
Obligation
If I feel obligation towards you, you can tip the scales by reminding me of that obligation. Obligations may come from:
• Favors you did me in the past and which I must now repay.
• Rules that I must follow, such as social rules to help a person in distress.
• Responsibilities that I feel, for example as a parent, friend or a manager.
Trust
If you earn my respect then I will trust you and this gives you far greater power to ask me for things, as I will not need to wonder whether you may take advantage of me.
Self determination
I am the only person who can decide what I say and do. As such I have power, which can be much greater than is suspected. I can, for example, always choose to say no and to walk out. This is of course, the basic power of Trade Unions.
Description
Intraorganizational power depends on three factors: problem skills, actor centrality and uniqueness of skill.
If you have the skills and expertise to resolve important problems, then you are going to be in demand. And by the law of supply and demand, that gives your the upper hand in negotiations. It also gives you power from the reciprocity created.
If you work in a central part of the workflow of the organization, then what you do is very important. This gives you many opportunities to be noticed. It also means you are on the critical path, such that if your part of the company fails, the whole show stops. Again creating attention and giving you bargaining power.
Finally, if you are difficult to replace, then if you do make enemies up the hierarchy, then they cannot just move you out or sideways.
Example
A production manager in an organization is in charge of a key manufacturing operation (centrality), and understands its complexities very well (uniqueness). From a long experience, when things go wrong, he is very good at fixing things, both mechanically and with the unions.
There are three dimensions of power in action, with two, two and three possible states. This gives 2 x 2 x 3 possible combinations, which gives 12 ways of using power.
Channels
The channels of power are the way in which power is enacted. They can perhaps more readily be remembered as 'head, hands and heart'.
Physical power
This is power derived from material or physical advantage. Individually, it can come from strength or skill, such as the power of a wrestler. It can also come from having weapons, which can be the ultimate power of groups and governments.
Physical power also comes from having things that are not designed to hurt people. Owning a building or a machine or even a sewing needle are forms of physical power.
Informational power
This is derived from knowledge. For example if I know your weaknesses I could leverage this knowledge when trying to persuade you, or maybe help you learn and shore up those weaknesses.
Power often comes from the control of access to information, where you can permit or offer access to others. Knowledge is power, as they say.
Emotional power
This is the social power of affect, using emotion to get what you want. Charisma is a form of emotional power, including the power of oratory and the use of subtle body language.
Threats are often emotional in the effect they have. In fact most interactions between people include some form of emotional power.
Intent
These form the intent of the person using power, helping or hurting others.
Positive power
This is power used for good, with the intent of helping others. It is used to protect and nurture, or at least do no harm. It is based on love, care, concern and pro-social values.
Negative power
This power that is used either to directly harm other people or with no care or concern about them. It is based either on greed and selfishness or on other negative emotions such as fear and hate.
Deliberateness
These are the deliberateness of power, the triggers which lead to power being used.
Reactive power
This is power that is used in response to situations, for example where a person has the power to say no or to restrict access in some form. This power cannot be utilized that until someone else wants something that can be blocked.
In some countries, crimes are considered as being less so when they are deemed as being reactive. Thus, in France, 'crimes of passion' are dealt with more leniently than over the water in Britain.
Proactive power
This is power used consciously and deliberately, for example using your physical strength to attack someone. This is where Values, Morals and Ethics are more significant, as they imply deliberate intent, premeditation and forethought.
Uses of power
Put together, these three domains of power can be used to create the table below. It's a neat way of understanding how different forms of power appear.
Uses of power Physical Informational Emotional
Reactive Positive Do no harm Open book
Allow access Respond to calls for help
Negative Allow harm Do not inform
Deny access Ignore
Reject calls
Proactive Positive Defend Inform, teach
Warn of danger Comfort
Nurture
Negative Attack
Do harm Withhold information
Blackmail, deceive Taunt
Seduce
Futurist Alvin Toffler describes three forms of power and shows how these have changed over time.
Violence
The most basic form of power is violence, or physical forms of power. 'Might is right' is their watchword and it is close to the law of the jungle in operation.
The basic promise is 'do as you are told and you won't get hurt'.
Those who gain the power of violence do so by controlling the mechanisms of physical domination, from armies and police forces to the ownership of specific weapons.
Wealth
Money is a more flexible form of power than violence as it can be exchanged for pretty much anything you want, from goods to services of all kinds.
Money can be viewed as 'stored time/action': you work and are given money, then give the money to others to save time/action. The trick in acquiring wealth is to invest the money in ways that it provides a maximum return on investment.
Those who gain wealth do so largely through a superior ability (or sometimes luck) in investment, taking controlled risks and gaining disproportionate returns.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the ultimate form of power and can be used to acquire both wealth and violence, if applied in the right way. 'Knowledge is power' is a common saying that highlights this.
The evolution of power
Toffler indicates how violence was the basic power of the nobility in ancient times, where a powerful elite worked largely through domination that threatened violence to those who did not comply.
In the industrial revolution, violence gave way to wealth, as the merchant classes became more powerful and gained control of critical resources and channels.
Today, in the Third Wave, the power of knowledge is replacing commercial wealth as the primary source of power. If you have the right knowledge, you can get a lot done without recourse to money. Power is thus moving to the educated elite (and masses). The internet is a great leveller of power in this regard.
Max Weber (1864 – 1920) was a left-wing liberal German political economist and sociologist. He despised the nobility and the seeking of power for its own ends.
He studied capitalism in general and the part of religion in particular.
Religion and the rise of capitalism
Some religions enable the march of capitalism, whilst others, such as Hinduism and Confucianism, do not. A key trigger in the Reformation was the removal of simple guarantees of being saved through belief, which led people to seek other routes to salvation.
Protestant work ethic
Weber coined the term 'Protestant work ethic' to describe a dedication to simplicity and hard work that the Protestant branches of the Christian church espoused.
The paradox of the Protestant work ethic was that whilst hard work led to commercial success, it was a sin (particularly in Calvinism) to spend the money on oneself or religious icons (Protestant churches are very simple, unlike Catholic ones). The way out was investment, which simply led to even more commercial success.
Mass-production also supported Protestant ideas of equality and countered individualism.
Commercial success and personal simplicity was seen as a particular demonstration of piety. If you can be rich yet resist the easy temptation it brings, then surely you will get into heaven.
The evolution of capitalism
In this way, modern capitalism actually grew from religious seeking of wealth as a symbol of work.
Over time in Western society the temptations of spending money on oneself increased and perhaps led to the decline in the religious element. Capitalism was thus established as a 'religion' of its own.
Capitalism unfettered
Weber described the spirit of capitalism as the ideas and habits that support the rational pursuit of economic gain.
Without the restraints of religion, greed and laziness lead to making the maximum amount of money for the minimum effort.
Where capitalism is not
Weber noted that Capitalism was not a necessary nor inevitable thing.
China
In his study of Chinese religions of Confucianism and Taoism, Weber noted that several factors did not lead to Capitalism, including:
• Confucianism supported many cults and variations. There was no unified priestly class.
• The Emperor was the high priest and worshipped to the gods. The people stuck to their ancestors.
• There was no unifying force to challenge the Emperor. Guilds were many and kinship loyalty fragmented society.
• Confucianism taught that pursuit of wealth was wrong (but having was not). People thus sought status in officialdom, which was unified with the emperor.
• Sale of land was often prohibited.
Confucianism was the state cult. Taoism was the popular 'religion', which was more a pacifist philosophy and had no gods.
India
Weber studied of the orthodoxy of Hinduism and the heterodoxy of Buddhism within the sociology of India.
Indian society is based around the status division of castes, made up of priests, warriors, merchants and workers, which inhibited the development of urban status groups, as castes were evenly spread and fixed social grouping.
The religions support this status quo with a view of an immutable world order. Notions of Karma and fatalism thus lead to people accepting their lot. The world was interpreted in mystical ways and intellectuals tended to be apolitical. There was also no 'Messianic prophesy' that gave hope of better things to the common people.
Society and the state
Weber noted the pre-eminence of the state in Western culture.
He recognized the need for 'ideal types' of society, but with an understanding that ideals are gross simplifications, missing out much of the messy reality.
He identified a 'three-component theory of stratification' of society:
• Social class: based on economic relationship to the market, e.g. employee, owner, lessee.
• Status: based on non-economical elements, e.g. religion, family, qualification.
• Party: affiliations to political parties and groups, e.g. Liberal, Greenpeace, Conservative.
Monopoly on force
The state has a monopoly on physical force and the use of this is given to police and military only. All other use is outlawed, except to defend one's body or property in given circumstances.
In the past, the church has been able to use force, for example in inquisitions and witch-hunts, but this right has gradually been removed.
Political leadership
Weber identified three pure types of political leadership:
• Domination and authority: charismatic domination by families and religions.
• Traditional domination: authoritarian domination by patriarchs and through feudal societies.
• Legal domination: in modern systems of state and bureaucracy.
He counsels politicians to combing the ethics of ultimate ends and of responsibility, having both passion for the work and the ability to distance oneself from the people being governed.
Bureaucracy
Weber is also very well known for his descriptions of bureaucracy. He did not particularly like it, but realized that, done well, it is both efficient and effective.
He was concerned that social values of grace and benevolence would be replaced by cold utilitarian values and officialdom. This is similar to Marx's principle of alienation.
He predicted correctly that the Soviet communist system would end up as an over-bureaucratized state.
He identified seven factors that govern a bureaucratic organization: rules, specialization, meritocracy, hierarchy, separate ownership, impersonality and accountability.
When threatened or otherwise stressed, people form into groups to defend against a common enemy. They may also band together to achieve a common goal.
This can be bad news and the bottom line is that if you are trying to get something done in an organization, you really do not want to have to do battle with a coalition.
Avoiding coalitions
It is best if you can first act to avoid coalitions starting, for example by:
• Managing information to demonstrate that they are not needed.
• Managing the sequence of information to guide their thinking and at least avoiding the worst forms of coalition.
• Increase the visibility of specific issues to show the irrelevance of a coalition.
• Break down the problem into separated issues, so a coalition cannot form around impossibly big issues.
Handling coalitions
Coalitions are more powerful than individuals, not only because they represent mass action, but because they also build in social obligations such that individual coalition members will be loathe to act individually and against the interests of the coalition as a whole.
This makes handling them very dangerous. Macmillan and Guth (1985) suggest the following tactics:
• Form a pre-emptive coalition, including some of the key people who would otherwise join the opposition.
• Form a counter-coalition if the opposing coalition appears anyway, although watch out for this causing war games.
• Change the power of the coaltions leaders, for example by restructuring their jobs beneath them, removing their position power.
• Co-opt coaltion members onto plum jobs, especially the waverers and key people.
• Increase communication and persuasion, because it is surprising how often just talking works.
• Remove coalition leaders, for example by sacking them or sending them overseas.
Political power is gained with care, cunning...and political power. Good politicians invest now to get more power later.
Alliances and coalitions
When people band together into coalitions they become more powerful. 'Together we stand, divided we fall', as they say. The trick with coalitions is to build a core idea around which people cluster. This may be negative, for example stopping a hated change, or may be positive, such as pushing through a change.
Favors and back-scratching
Political power often is build on a system of exchange, where people in a power relationship support one another as needed and perhaps in different ways (possibly even by breaking the rules).
Bribery, blackmail and corruption
Politics can indeed have a shadow side to it, and such negative means may be gained to garner power. A surprising number of people have skeletons and more in their closet. Digging out the dirt is a popular political ploy. What you do with it next depends on your style. A political animal will hide the information. A politically naive person will squander the power it could give, either by not talking about it or by turning it into office gossip.
What makes campaigns successful, be they political or commercial in nature? Here's six common themes that can be found in those that work best.
Structured communication
The communication system of successful campaigns is extremely well managed, with closely targeted listeners who are very well understood. Messages are managed both internally (with their structure and content) and over time (with consistency and developing stories).
There are strict rules about who can say what and any loose cannons in the camp are contained. All messages are reviewed carefully before being released into defined channels.
Credibility
Successful campaigns first and last establish credibility and a sense of truth and rightness in all that they do. People, products and ideas all seem to be reasonable, feasible, competent, trustworthy, expert and so on. It is easy to accept what is said as fair and difficult to make accusation of lying or deception.
Aligned climate
The message that the campaign is promoting is carefully aligned with popular opinion and the general climate of the day. There is no real attempt to push water uphill. New spins may be put onto messages to make them seem innovative, but no reversals or serious shifts of public opinion are attempted.
Target opinion leaders
Messages are particularly targeted at those people who will credibly repeat them at others. These social leaders, once infected with enthusiasm, will not only become valuable advocates, they will also be listened to by their own large constituency. This 'two-step' process effectively bounces the message off the opinion leader into the mind of the actual targets.
Commonplace interesting
The campaign may take relatively commonplace things, whether it is soap powder or a well-known social issue, and turns them into fascinating issues that capture the imagination and which draw people further in. The issue is talked about with great fascination. Strong values are attached to it. Ordinary people are shown to take great interest in it.
Positive messages
When a message makes you feel bad, you are likely to want to run away from it. On the other hand, messages that make you feel good attract you in as you seek more of those good feelings. Campaigns thus seek to create warmth, happiness and excitement that people find attractive and desirable.
Playing to what's there
Rather than trying to teach people new tricks, the mental models, beliefs and memories of the target audience is mined and cued. Existing ideas and experiences are portrayed to create a sense of comfort and understanding, and only then subtle new spins are added to shift thinking just a little (but just enough).
There are five stages for starting a campaign, whether it is a political campaign or an advertising campaign. This is also known as the 'Yale Development Model.'
Define identity
The first stage for setting up a campaign is to be very clear about who you are and what you stand for. People will join your campaign only if they can identity with it, forming a close bond with it.
Defining identity means considering what the values and beliefs of the organization will be. You are, in effect, setting up a new 'person', and considering the whole personality can be a useful activity.
Think about the visual triggers that will say who you are. Use a clear color theme. Define a logo that aligns with the identity. Define slogans that both look good and resonate in an auditory sense.
Also think about how to differentiate your identity from that of others. When people look at the campaign it should portray a very distinct personality that separates it from other campaigns.
Establish legitimacy
Create legitimacy for the campaign so people will take it seriously and accept it as a valid thing. If you are in an existing party or are using a known brand, then you will automatically already have the legitimacy of that party or brand. If you are in a party, get the sponsorship of its leading members.
Remember your personal legitimacy too. Maybe you are well qualified to speak as you do. Maybe you have long experience.
Seek further power through alliances. Ensure your policies and other elements of identity are aligned with those of your allies (and vice versa). You can also ally with ideas of the day, joining with them and showing that you are supporting good causes.
One reason you need strong legitimacy is because your opponents will try to destroy it. Consider how they might do this and prepare accordingly. Know what skeletons you have in the cupboard and either hide them well or get them out early to prevent others using them against you.
Create participation
Invite and recruit people to join your campaign. Display your identity and show how allying with it will be good for them. Give them opportunities to become involved, creating a sense of investment. Give them small gifts or do them favors to create a dynamic of exchange or to establish your as a good or helpful. Ask them to display symbols of the campaign (which also increases their identification with it).
Participation is particularly important early on as you cannot do everything yourself and gaining more active hands will multiply the number of further participative members you can recruit.
Achieve penetration
Build mass and momentum that will carry you forward and drag in bystanders and anyone in your path. Create a machine that runs by itself, with slick processes of recruitment and retention that will keep the path rolling.
Penetration does not need significant participation of the newer recruits, as the main officers and activists of the campaign would be recruited in the previous stage. In the penetration stage, what you really want is visible membership that continues to convince slower people that this is the place to be. Social rules lead to people fearing being left behind and joining not really because they believe in the ideals but because this is where the party is or that where they are standing is no longer fashionable.
Become an institution
Finally, and if appropriate (as many campaigns have a limited duration) create continuity and permanence that says 'we are here to stay'. Establish long-term goals and strategies. Acquire an imposing headquarters. Set up fixed processes for handling bureaucratic elements of work.
The Communicative Functions model describes four stages of a political campaign, particularly typical of American Presidential elections.
Surfacing
This stage is also called 'winnowing' as it is like the extraction of the valuable grain from the worthless corn stalk. It is where the candidate looks to find what real support they have and the actual nature of this support.
To get elected to any high office is not a solo affair. You need feet on the street and you need funds. It is one thing for people to tell you to stand for election and it is another for them to put their time and money into the game. This is the stage at which you find out what real support you have.
The early parts of this stage also include mapping out the territory and then checking out all parts to determine how much real support you have across the field and not just in your home office. This is a significant test, where you get to try out your election policies and how you put them across on real people. This may include serious social research to get a feel for what voters will support (and not).
Primaries
In this stage, the initial wide field of candidates gets thinned down to a workable set of potentials. The party hierarchy may decide by committee or a wider voting system may be used.
Before this selection, much canvassing will go on as candidates trade promises and seek internal support. Even before the election, this can still be a very expensive process and presidential candidates can spend millions putting their case to the party faithful.
Nomination
In the nomination process, the final candidate is selected from within the party and is presented to the media as the face and brand of what the party represents today.
This is a very careful communication process as initial impressions easily stick and the party brand may be damaged by careless words.
Election
At last, the race for the post begins and the candidates no longer fight within the party walls but compete one party against another. Faction differences are healed (or at least put aside) and battle is joined between the different party communication machines.
All media are utilized to the full, included billboards, the press, TV, and internet social media channels. The candidates appears in every way and as often as possible. They give sound bites, kiss babies and duel in televised debates. The party faithful get out on the streets and go online to persuade everyone they can find.
On the election day the exhortations reach fever pitch and if you cannot get to polling station then surely someone will come and take you there and back again.
And then there is the count (and possibly the recount) and the victor is announced to the world. Victories speeches are magnanimous and parties carefully staged, with the victor unable to relax until some time later.
Propaganda is an evocative word that brings to mind images of dictatorships and wartime misinformation. Although not as widespread as conspiracy theorists might have us believe, it is still in use daily in virtually every country.
Propaganda articles
• What is propaganda?: Basic definition of propaganda.
• A brief history: From Pope Gregory XV onwards.
• Military, media and education: The dictator's three friends.
• Modern propaganda: Totalitarian omnipresence of persuasive messages.
Propaganda techniques
• Bandwagon: Pump up the value of 'joining the party'.
• Card-stacking: Build a highly-biased case for your position.
• Character assassination: Destroy the person.
• Glittering generalities: Use power words to evoke emotions.
• Information management: Knowledge is power.
• Name-calling: Denigrating opponents.
• Plain folks: Making the leader seem ordinary increases trust and credibility.
• Stereotyping: Classify the other side negatively.
• Testimonial: The testimony of an independent person is seen as more trustworthy.
• Transfer: Associate the leader with trusted others.
• Six tools for managing perception: Toffler's methods.
Propaganda is an evocative word that brings to mind images of dictatorships and wartime misinformation. Although not as widespread as conspiracy theorists might have us believe, it is still in use daily in virtually every country.
The ideological goal
The basic defining goal of propaganda is that it seeks to control what people believe - that is, the ideas they consider to be unquestionably true. Thus propaganda is about ideology, which may be political, religious, philosophical.
In some senses, all ideologies use propaganda when they promote their ideas as being the only real truth and denigrate other belief systems as bad, evil or just plain wrong.
The hidden quality
Another defining quality of perfect propaganda is that it is hidden, such that the recipients perceive it and communications about it as a simple truth. The subject matter just becomes what is normal and the communicator of the message is not perceived as trying to persuade or manipulate.
In brief, then, propaganda is covert persuasion of large numbers of people.
At the other end of the realization scale, if people perceive themselves as victims of manipulative machinations, then they will feel betrayed and hence rebel against the manipulator. This rebellion may be open or, if the manipulator has other power (such as military) then it may become subverted and covert.
Basic conditions
For propaganda to happen, there must be a person or persons in positions of power where they have significant control over mass-communication media. This can include presidents, governments and media moguls. At a smaller scale, it also includes company bosses, head teachers and parents.
That person must have a need either that a significant group of people believe something to be true or perceive something in some way.
Religious propagation
The term 'propaganda' first appeared in 1622 when Pope Gregory XV established the Sacred Congregation for Propagating the Faith. Propaganda was then as now about convincing large numbers of people about the veracity of a given set of ideas.
Of course, propaganda is as old as people, politics and religion. People with ideas will always want to persuade others about them and, if they have the power, they will pull every string they have to persuade everyone.
Propaganda and war
Wars have always been a good reason for governments wanting to persuade populaces of the justness of their cause as well as hide the horrors and failures of the front line. Misinformation and disinformation are widely used to distract people from the truth and create new realities.
Entry into the first world war was apparently accompanied with many stories of atrocities that were false. Things have not changed and more recent wars have also had more than their fair share of propaganda.
Nazi propaganda
In 1933, Hitler realized the potential of propaganda and appointed Joseph Goebbels as Minister for Propaganda. Goebbels was remarkably effective and much of the propaganda literature discusses in detail the methods they used.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA)
In 1936 Boston merchant Edward Filene helped establish the short-lived Institute for Propaganda Analysis which sought to educate Americans to recognize propaganda techniques. Although it did not last long, they did produce a list of seven propaganda methods that have become something of a standard.
• Bandwagon: Pump up the value of 'joining the party'.
• Card-stacking: Build a highly-biased case for your position.
• Glittering generalities: Use power words to evoke emotions.
• Name-calling: Denigrating opponents.
• Plain folks: Making the leader seem ordinary increases trust and credibility.
• Testimonial: The testimony of an independent person is seen as more trustworthy.
• Transfer: Associate the leader with trusted others.
The modern world
Propaganda and manipulation of reality continues to be used in large quantities in the modern world. Governments continue to tell their constituencies what they think they need to know. Advertisers use the whole gamut of propagandist techniques. And although some people can see the reality (and some theorize about improbable conspiracies), most people are taken in and see nothing of how they are manipulated.
One of the key things that any dictator knows is that in order to achieve absolute control, they need to have control of the military, the media and education.
Military
The military and police offer the crudest and most absolute forms of control. When you can physically restrict people, locking them up or shooting them, then all dissidents will go in fear and very few will dare open their mouths.
Yet using military might is not a good solution. When coerced, you will get control of hands, but not hearts or minds. Rebellion is always in the air and the dictator will always go in fear of his or her life.
Media
When you control the media, you can control the messages that are put in front of people day in and day out. If all that people see is a consistent message, then they will eventually come to believe it.
The internet has caused problems for dictators here, as has telephones and all other electronic forms of media that allow foreign ideas to worm their way into the system.
Education
When you control the education system, you can instill values and beliefs from a very young age, particularly if you can move them from any contrary family environment into a consistent and controlled system.
The Jesuits are famous for starting with the very young, with the chilling declaration 'Give me the child and I will give you the man'. Values that are instilled when young may disappear for a while during teenage years, but almost always creep back again afterwards
These are the characteristics of modern propaganda put forward by Jaques Ellul, who noticed the all-pervading conformist messages that we (often unknowingly) receive.
Industrialization
Propaganda is most prevalent in industrial societies where there is significant division of labor and expertise. In such complex environments, people not only may come up with dangerous ideas, they may also seek to persuade others to join their cause. Industrial societies also have greater connection between more people and thus enable ideas to spread more quickly.
In more feudal environments, where there are absolute rulers and simple class systems, the complexities of propaganda are not needed. When the peasants revolt, you simply put them back in their place. Generally, however, they know their place and quietly stay there.
Complexity
Propaganda is seldom just a simple method, such as making speeches or using posters. It is often a complex web of communications that seeks to reach people through all media and all situations. Disconfirming evidence or opinion can be very destructive for propagandists, so these must be removed, drowned out or discredited (which adds further to the complexity of the propaganda effort).
Masses
Propaganda happens in societies where people are depersonalized and forced into masses, where their sense of identity comes more from the group than from their own sense of mission or being. Thus people belong to religious, political, work and social groups, from which they take their beliefs and values.
If the propagandist can influence the leaders and fundamentals of those groups, then they will be able to convince and convert whole slews of people in a single go.
Integration
The purpose of most modern propaganda as used by controlling organizations is not to agitate people and make them feel unhappy. Its main goal is to integrate individuals into society through the use of such devices as peer pressure and social norms. These rules are set by leaders, who themselves may be influence by the propagandists.
Blocs
Global propaganda tends to fall into a limited and small number of 'blocs' that often are aligned with particular ideologies. Politically capitalist and communist blocs have long used internal propaganda to demonize the other. The same thing happens through religion, and Christian and Islamic groups have fought in various ways and used much propaganda against one another for hundreds of year.
Totalitarian
Propaganda messages appear from all directions and virtually everything contains some element of messages that promote conformity of appearance, thought and action. In many modern totalitarian countries, people are the willing participants in their own containment, perhaps complaining at control, yet perceiving alternatives as worse.
Simplification
An effect that propagandists seek is to make things seem far simpler than they really are. Good and bad are clear and polarized (enemies and friends are always clear). Social issues are simplified into limited issues (e.g. around abortion and gun-control). Public opinion is stereotyped and presented back by a media that prides itself on clarifying the issues (and who are themselves subject to propagandist messages).
Omnipresent
Finally, the propaganda is everywhere, from TV shows to the nightly news to shopping malls to the things you keep in your bedroom. All aspects of everyone's life is invaded in some way, from the fashions (and limitations therein) that people choose and wear to the food (types, packaging, etc.) that is eaten, let alone the communications via the ever-present media.
Rupert Wilkinson describes four American fears that pervade the US culture.
1. The fear of being owned
Many of the American forefathers were escaping oppression in Europe and their fears has persisted such that there is now there is a deep distrust of centralized government and large institutions.
This helps to explain why Communism is distrusted and feared by Americans.
2. The fear of falling apart
Having build a large nation, they fear everything coming undone, as was threatened in the Civil War and is continued in the tensions between autonomy of states and the federal government.
This is expressed at the personal level with the need to have a perfect life with a perfect face, a perfect family etc. It is also about striving for identity and control in a turbulent world.
Mitroff (2005) adds the dimension of "blown apart" in the aftermath of 9/11, the fear that underlies abnormal accidents.
3. The fear of falling away
This fear is about losing their way and abandoning of the American dreams of the forefathers, including being the "moral beacon" of the world.
The original idea for America was relatively Utopian and there is a constant concern that this societal perfection will be eroded by the temptations of the material world.
4. The fear of winding down
This is a fear of losing the boundless energy of the forefathers which still pervades the dynamism of American business today.
The great American Dream of rags to riches (and subsequent social and global position) is widely accepted as being gained through enormous energy and diligence. When this fades through laziness or the greater energy of other countries, such as India or China, then the fear is increased.
An early study, based on an investigation into political speeches, was published in 1961 by Edward Steele and Charles Redding that identified a set of archetypical American values.
Puritan and pioneer morality
The world is made up of people who are good and bad, foul and fair. You are either one of the good guys or you are one of the bad guys. If you are not with us, you are against us.
Value of the individual
The individual has rights above that of general society and government. Success occurs at the level of the individual. People should not have to fight for their rights. The government should protect the rights of the individual, not the other way around.
Achievement and success
Success is measured by the accumulation of power, status, wealth and property. What you already have is not as important as what you continue to accumulate. A retired wealthy person was successful, but is now less admirable.
Change and progress
Change is inevitable. Progress is good and leads to success. If you do not keep up, you will fall behind. Newer is always better. The next version will be better than the last.
Ethical equality
All people are equal, both spiritually and in the opportunities they deserve. This includes differences in race, gender, disability, age, sexual preference and so on.
Effort and optimism
Hard work and striving is the key to success. The great American Dream of fame and fortune comes to those who work hard and never give up.
Efficiency, practicality and pragmatism
Solution is more important than ideology. Utility is more important than show. A key question to any idea is 'Will it work?'
Religion and war
Strangely, religion and war are not strange bedfellows and if you counted up the people who have died in religious conflicts you would have a very big number and the counter would still be spinning. The current big duel is Christianity vs. Islam, a conflict started in the Crusades of the Middle Ages. There have also been plenty of other fighting inspired by the gods, going back into Pagan times. And when there are insufficient other religious battles, infighting breaks out between Catholic and Protestant, Sunni and Shiite, and so on. And if you broaden the principle to ideological conflict, then you can include communism vs capitalism, such as in the proxy fighting of the cold war.
So what is going on? Both religion and war seek to change minds, and when preaching fails war may be seen as a legitimate alternative. This seems a rather bizarre approach in the false belief that coercion will lead to ideological conversion (you will believe this or I will hit you!). In practice, the conflict is far more human.
Sometimes the real cause is territorial, with two (or more) religious groups feeling ownership of the same land, from Northern Ireland to Palestine, where basic arguments include 'We were here first', 'We are here now' and God gave this land to us'. Where territory is involved then political power follows. It also invokes basic needs for a place to live, and religious purpose fades as individuals fight hard to defend their homes.
Another reason we fight over ideas is that belief makes us feel safe. If I believe the world works in a certain way I can predict and control it and so feel secure. Beliefs about how we should act towards others are the glue of society, allowing us to live together in relative harmony. Beliefs also create our sense of identity as we use 'I...' statements.
Many of our daily conflicts are based in subtle differences in underlying beliefs and when these collide we get argue. Anger is a natural response when we feel cornered and challenging beliefs, which are at the foundation of our perception and thinking, often gives us nowhere to go but unthinking animal responses. This effect is amplified when religions seek blind belief and where challenge and exploration is forbidden. From this position, the jihad of righteous war is a short step away..
Goodhart's Law
Have you ever noticed how government 'indicators' hardly ever seem to provide an agreed and accurate measure of the subject? How they are set up in a fanfare of openness and promise then degenerate into confusion, mismanagement and accusation?
This is a principle that was defined in 1975, in a paper by chief economic advisor to the Bank of England Charles Goodhart. It became particularly popular for explaining the problems in the 1980s when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defined assorted metrics for managing monetary policy.
This principle is also true in business and other organizations. You define a 'success' measure but when it comes around to assessing success it doesn't seem to be that effective. There are several reasons for this. First, the world is not a simple place. To paraphrase a popular quote: 'For every problem there is answer that is simple, elegant and wrong.' Secondly and very significantly, when you set up a metric by which people are rewarded or punished and they will act to optimize that measure, including in ways that detrimental to other important things. As a salesman once told me: 'Tell me how I am measured and I'll tell you how I'll behave.' Well-meaning performance metrics easily lead to sub-optimal performance.
There is also a Reverse Goodhart's Law, which says that if a government's economic credibility is sufficiently damaged, then its targets are seen as irrelevant and, bizarrely, the economic indicators regain their reliability as a guide to policy. In the wake of the Thatcher years, Prime Minister John Major's stumblings had this effect.
So what should you do? Perhaps the best idea in recent times is the principle of the balanced scorecard, where measures act as checks and balances for one another and too much attention to one measure damages another.
Changing a politician's mind?
Last night I went to another excellent lecture at the RSA in London. The speaker was Peter Mandelson, a famous and controversial political figure here in the UK. He spoke eloquently at length on British business and how the government was helping it all along. He used neat terms like 'industrial activism' and talked about the need for competitiveness to survive on the global stage.
Afterwards, there was the usual round of questions, though as he had to shoot off there were only five allowed. The trick here is to catch the eye of the chairman who chooses the questioners. I got to ask the final question, partly because I kept my hand up when the fourth question was being asked and the chairman nodded at me so I would put my hand down. Maybe also he knows me by now and that I try to keep my questions sharp.
Most questioners tend to ramble a bit or ask several questions, which can be rather vague. For politicians, this is manna from heaven as it means they can answer however they like. I thought hard about how to phrase my question. This is what I said:
'David Straker, Changing Minds ... I like your idea of industrial activism and the role of government in competing with other governments in developing and supporting British business. Businesses compete through a set of core competences which are hard to duplicate and thus provide sustainable competitive advantage. I'm not asking about British business. I'm asking about the British government. My question is 'What are the core competences of the British government?'
This caused a ripple around the room, which told me that I'd got it about right and also told Peter Mandelson here was a question he'd have to think about carefully. He answered the other questions well enough, then joked about not having much time left to answer my question. He had a fair go, which was good, though I could see he was struggling a bit.
I don't remember the detail of his reply and in fact it doesn't really matter. What mattered for me was first that the name 'Changing Minds' got aired in company of a Minister, the press and other luminaries. Secondly and more importantly, I think it made Peter Mandelson think about the subject. Maybe it's wishful thinking but I hope he went back to his department and asked the same question of his team. If the result is that they consider the question of core competences and change their approach as a result, then I will have influenced central thinking in British politics and perhaps helped the country a little.
Whether I really made a difference or not, I at least enjoyed the event, though I do have my fingers crossed. In the current global climate and international competition, governments and their competitive abilities are critical for national commercial success.
People create legislature
There are two extremes of government, with many variations in between. At one end, a single person seizes power and impose their will on the country. At the other end, everyone in the country has a say in what happens and there is true sharing of power. There is also anarchy, where there is no government (although the human tribal tendency means that true anarchy never lasts).
In between, there are other forms of coercive government such as military juntas, and collaborative governments, from republics to communes.
The legislature is thus either a self-appointed person or committee, or else a representative group. The self-appointed system is, in many ways, much simpler in creation and execution, although unless it is benevolent, it usually requires force to maintain. The representative group requires a system of selection (such parties and voting) and organizing.
The basic level of persuasion is thus to the people who elect or support the government, which may be the army or the population. Canvassing, promises and other electioneering tactics are used to convince the voter that their wishes will be fulfilled.
Legislature creates laws
Laws get proposed, researched, debated and agreed. This can be a long process with committees and sub-committees ensuring that each law does not conflict with other existing laws and is true and fair in line with the broader intentions of the government and country.
The organization of the legislature often includes many checks and balances to ensure fairness and prevent bad laws being 'slipped through'. Dual chamber houses, head-of-state sign-off and so on are used for this purpose.
Persuasion in law-creation often includes a great deal of lobbying by pressure groups which range from farmers to mothers and assorted racial and religious societies.
Civil servants administers laws
Once laws are passed, for the most part they then pass to a huge body of civil servants who ensure that the laws get implemented. This includes informing those who must obey the laws and checking that the laws are obeyed as written.
Persuasion in administration includes basic communication along with escalations of warnings that promise prosecution or worse if the laws are not obeyed.
Police and courts enforce laws
When the laws are not obeyed, then there is a clear system of enforcement. The police act to enforce criminal law and can immediately react to such as disorder on the streets. Civil laws also allow citizens to prosecute one another, in which cases police seldom have to intervene.
Persuasion at this level is often coercive, either physically or by threat of physical intervention. Most people will obey edicts of the courts, though for those who do not the police and others (for example bailiffs) can physically intervene. The ultimate punishments are the confiscation of assets, imprisonment and even execution.
When Benjamin Franklin was 20, he wrote a 13-point plan for how he would live his life. It was so successful that he stuck to it for many years. He would focus on one point each week, such that he would cycle through the whole set once every 13 weeks and four times per year. He kept track of progress with a chart in which he would put a red dot for each fault against each virtue committed that day.
These are a set of values he defined in 1741, in his own words (plus his added commentary).
• Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
• Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
• Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
• Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
• Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
• Industry. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
• Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
• Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
• Moderation. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
• Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
• Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
• Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
• Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
"It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor ow'd the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year, in which this is written. What reverses may attend the remainder is in the hand of Providence; but, if they arrive, the reflection on past happiness enjoy'd ought to help his bearing them with more resignation. To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the imperfect state he was able to acquire them, all that evenness of temper, and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his company still sought for, and agreeable even to his younger acquaintance. I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.
"In this piece it was my design to have endeavored to convince young persons that no qualities were so likely to make a poor man's fortune as those of probity and integrity.
"My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list.
"In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility."
When Pope Gregory defined the seven deadly sins that we should avoid, he also included a counter-balancing set of values that we should espouse and adopt. These are:
1. Faith is belief in the right things (including the virtues!).
2. Hope is taking a positive future view, that good will prevail.
3. Charity is concern for, and active helping of, others.
4. Fortitude is never giving up.
5. Justice is being fair and equitable with others.
6. Prudence is care of and moderation with money.
7. Temperance is moderation of needed things and abstinence from things which are not needed.
The first three of these are known as the Spiritual Virtues, whilst the last four are called the Chief or Natural Virtues. The Natural Virtues had already been defined by Greek philosophers, whilst the Spiritual Virtues are a slight variation on St. Paul's trio of Love, Hope and Faith (due to variation in translation from the original: Charity and Love arguably have a high level of overlap).
There are also a number of other sets of virtues, including:
• The Seven Contrary Virtues which are specific opposites to the Seven Deadly Sins: Humility against pride, Kindness against envy, Abstinence against gluttony, Chastity against lust, Patience against anger, Liberality against greed, and Diligence against sloth.
• The Theological Virtues: Love, Hope and Faith, as defined by St. Paul (who placed love as the greatest of them all).
• The four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Temperance, Courage and Justice.
• The Seven Heavenly Virtues: Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Justice, Temperance, Prudence.
• The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy are a medieval list of things you can do to help others: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, give shelter to strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, minister to prisoners, and bury the dead.
• The Seven Bushido Virtues: Right decisions, Valor, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, and Loyalty.
The Age of Enlightenment was a period of scientific awakening, largely centred around France, although the starting point for Enlightenment was John Locke's (1632-1705) book Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which was a relentless attack on metaphysical arguments. Metaphysics is posing the existence of objects that cannot be observed.
The Enlightenment met the church head on, tackling previously avoided issues. It was, at least initially, an act of great courage to defy the church. Kant said 'sapere aude' = 'dare to know'. Having courage of your own understanding.
In particular, the Enlightenment allows people to question anything.
The focus on self-consciousness led to a break with the past rather than a gradual change and the tendency towards specialisations led to hastening of division of disciplines (see Descartes) and spawned many specialist journals and an active printing industry.
Four main transformations
Four areas where significant change occurred were:
• Religious
o Questioning of Catholic beliefs and Protestantism led to tolerance for new ideas.
• Intellectual
o Free intellectual inquiry resulted from widespread opposition to religious intolerance.
o The French revolution led to 'age of reason'.
o Educational institutions free of religious allegiance also spread.
• Economic
o Industrial revolution, move away from agrarian fiefdoms led to an increasingly wealthy, independent and educated middle class.
• Political
o Nation-states emerged, ruled by kings and parliaments that only paid lip-service to religious rule.
• Parties and factions which have legitimate differences of opinion.
Hollinger's four summary claims
• Everything worth knowing can be unified in a set of beliefs that all rational people can accept.
• Moral principles are rational and provide standards for conduct and judgement.
• Any contradiction to these is an obstacle to progress and happiness.
• The truth will set us free.
The Philosophes
The Philosophes were a loose movement interested in all forms of knowledge. They were quite anti-clerical and often campaigned on behalf of its victims.
They regarded knowledge based on experience as the best form of understanding. They heroised Newton and were keen on technology and science.
They focused on legal reform, admired the British Constitution and generally championing reason and tolerance.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784) first published the huge 'Encyclopédie' in 1751 as reference point of human knowledge. It was polemic, tendentious and sometimes scandalous.
The Scottish Enlightenment
David Hume (1711-1776) and the Scottish Enlightenment challenged empiricist tendency to fall back on ordinary moral beliefs which were seen to cause invalid causal explanation.
In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1784), he argued for rethinking of cause and effect and identified that correlation does not imply causation. He considered knowledge should not be taken for granted and doubt should always remain. Even more than Locke, he opposed metaphysics.
Criticism
The Enlightenment was double-edged as it contained a critical spirit, yet sought certainty. It did not address gender and racial biases.
Beware the 'mousetrap of social science methodology': the fact/value controversy.
Nietsche criticised the idea that knowledge, truth and rationality are supremely important. Carried to the extremes, they destroy much of what is important in life, including life itself.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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Article. I.
Section. 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section. 3.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Section. 4.
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.
Section. 5.
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
Section. 6.
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
Section. 7.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Section. 9.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Section. 10.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
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Article. II.
Section. 1.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Section. 2.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section. 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Section. 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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Article III.
Section. 1.
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Section. 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of another State,--between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
Section. 3.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
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Article. IV.
Section. 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Section. 2.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Section. 3.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
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Article. V.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
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Article. VI.
All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
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Article. VII.
The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
The Word, "the," being interlined between the seventh and eighth Lines of the first Page, the Word "Thirty" being partly written on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words "is tried" being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of the first Page and the Word "the" being interlined between the forty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.
Attest William Jackson Secretary
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
G°. Washington
Presidt and deputy from Virginia
Delaware
Geo: Read
Gunning Bedford jun
John Dickinson
Richard Bassett
Jaco: Broom
Maryland
James McHenry
Dan of St Thos. Jenifer
Danl. Carroll
Virginia
John Blair
James Madison Jr.
North Carolina
Wm. Blount
Richd. Dobbs Spaight
Hu Williamson
South Carolina
J. Rutledge
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
Pierce Butler
Georgia
William Few
Abr Baldwin
New Hampshire
John Langdon
Nicholas Gilman
Massachusetts
Nathaniel Gorham
Rufus King
Connecticut
Wm. Saml. Johnson
Roger Sherman
New York
Alexander Hamilton
New Jersey
Wil: Livingston
David Brearley
Wm. Paterson
Jona: Dayton
Pennsylvania
B Franklin
Thomas Mifflin
Robt. Morris
Geo. Clymer
Thos. FitzSimons
Jared Ingersoll
James Wilson
Gouv Morris
Transcript of Articles of Confederation (1777)
To all to whom these Presents shall come, we, the undersigned, Delegates of the States affixed to our Names, send greeting: Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America in Congress assembled, did on the fifteenth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy seven, and in the second year of the Independence of America, agree to certain articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, in the words following, viz. Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl-vania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Article I. The stile of this confederacy shall be, “The United States of America.”
Article II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation, expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding them-selves to assist each other against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.
Article IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impo-sitions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively; provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also, that no imposition, duties, or restriction, shall be laid by any State on the property of the United States, or either of them.
If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the united States, he shall, upon demand of the governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, and re-moved to the State having jurisdiction of his offence.
Full faith and credit shall be given, in each of these States, to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.
Article V. For the more convenient management of the general interests of the united States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead, for the remainder of the year.
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than Seven Members; and no person shall be capable of being delegate for more than three years, in any term of Six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the united States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees, or emolument of any kind.
Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while they act as members of the committee of the States.
In determining questions in the united States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote.
Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any Court or place out of Congress; and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on, Congress, except for treason, felony or breach of the peace.
Article VI. No State, without the consent of the united States, in congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conferrence, agreement, alliance, or treaty, with any King, prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the united States, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign State; nor shall the united States, in congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.
No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation, or alliance whatever, between them, without the consent of the united States, in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.
No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may inter-fere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the united States, in congress assembled, with any king, prince, or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by congress to the courts of France and Spain.
No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace, by any State, except such number only as shall be deemed necessary by the united States, in congress assembled, for the defence of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up, by any State, in time of peace, except such number only as, in the judgment of the united States, in congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accounted, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field-pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition, and camp equipage.
No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the united States, in congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so immi-nent as not to admit of a delay till the united States, in congress assembled, can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the united States, in congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or State, and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the united States, in congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the united States, in congress assembled, shall determine otherwise.
Article VII. When land forces are raised by any State, for the common defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made appointment.
Article VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united States, in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States, in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted to, or surveyed for, any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated, according to such mode as the united States, in congress assembled, shall, from time to time, direct and appoint. The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States, within the time agreed upon by the united States, in congress assembled.
Article IX. The united States, in congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth Article, of sending and receiving ambassadors; entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made, whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever; of establishing rules for de-ciding, in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the united Sates, shall be divided or appropriated; of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace; appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas; and establishing courts; for receiving and determine-ing finally appeals in all cases of captures; provided that no member of congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.
The united States, in congress assembled, shall also be the last resort on appeal, in all disputes and differences now subsisting, or that hereafter may arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction, or any other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority, or lawful agent of any State in controversy with another, shall present a petition to congress, stating the matter in question, and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given, by order of congress, to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in con- troversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint, by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, congress shall name three persons out of each of the united States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names, as congress shall direct, shall, in the presence of congress, be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn, or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges, who shall hear the cause, shall agree in the determi-nation: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without showing reasons which congress shall judge sufficient, or being present, shall refuse to strike, the congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court, to be appointed in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgment, which shall in like manner be final and decisive; the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to congress, and lodged among the acts of congress, for the security of the parties con-cerned: provided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgment, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of the Supreme or Superior court of the State where the cause shall be tried, “well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgment, without favour, affection, or hope of reward: “Provided, also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the united States.
All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more States, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated ante-cedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall, on the petition of either party to the congress of the united States, be finally determined, as near as may be, in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.
The united States, in congress assembled, shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the united States; regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States; provided that the legislative right of any State, within its own limits, be not in-fringed or violated; establishing and regulating post-offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same, as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office; appointing all officers of the land forces in the service of the united States, excepting regimental officers; appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the united States; making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
The united States, in congress assembled, shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of congress, to be denominated, “A Committee of the States,” and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the united States under their direction; to appoint one of their number to preside; provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the united States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses; to borrow money or emit bills on the credit of the united States, transmitting every half year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted; to build and equip a navy; to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State, which requi-sition shall be binding; and thereupon the Legislature of each State shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men, and clothe, arm, and equip them, in a soldier-like manner, at the expense of the united States; and the officers and men so clothed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the united States, in congress assembled; but if the united States, in congress assembled, shall, on consideration of circumstances, judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number than its quota, and that any other State should raise a greater number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, clothed, armed, and equipped in the same manner as the quota of such State, unless the Legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spared out of the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, clothe, arm, and equip, as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the officers and men so clothed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the united States in congress assembled.
The united States, in congress assembled, shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the united States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the united States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same, nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day, be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the united States in congress assembled.
The congress of the united States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the united States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances, or military operations, as in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State, on any question, shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegate; and the delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request, shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States.
Article X. The committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of congress, such of the powers of congress as the united States, in congress assembled, by the consent of nine States, shall, from time to time, think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said committee, for the exercise of which, by the articles of con-federation, the voice of nine States, in the congress of the united States assembled, is requisite.
Article XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.
Article XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by or under the authority of congress, before the assembling of the united States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the united States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.
Article XIII. Every State shall abide by the determinations of the united States, in congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the articles of this confederation shall be inviol-ably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united States, and be afterwards con-firmed by the legislatures of every State.
And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual union, Know Ye, that we, the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do, by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said articles of confederation and perpetual union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained. And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the united States, in congress assembled, on all questions which by the said confederation are submitted to them; and that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual. In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hands, in Congress. Done at Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania, the ninth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy eight, and in the third year of the Independence of America.
‘Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.’
— Howard Aiken
‘He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.’
— Francis Bacon
‘The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and iindustry, "Thus far and no farther".’
— Ludwig van Beethoven
‘Good ideas, as we have seen, are not always well received, especially if there are too many of them.’
— R. Meredith Belbin
‘Innovation—any new idea—by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, and monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires "courageous patience.".’
— Warren Bennis
‘I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here…We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.’
— Simon Cameron
‘New ideas pass through three periods:
• It can’t be done.
• It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing.
• I knew it was a good idea all along.’
— Arthur C. Clarke
‘There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it with reluctance.’
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
‘The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.’
— Salvador Dali
‘There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the possible exception of the sword.’
— Benjamin Dana
‘Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of aversion and preference.’
— John Dewey
‘Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.’
— Albert Einstein
‘Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘These days, the problem isn't how to innovate; it's how to get society to adopt the good ideas that already exist.’
— Douglas Englebart
‘Man’s fear of ideas is probably the greatest dike holding back human knowledge and happiness.’
— Morris Leopold Ernst
‘Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they oppose it.’
— Sigmund Freud
‘Faced with changing one's mind, or proving that there is no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.’
— John Kenneth Galbraith
‘When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.’
— John Kenneth Galbraith
‘By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.’
— Galileo Galilei
‘Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.’
— Herodotus
‘Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter, we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.’
— William Hazlitt
‘The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.’
— Eric Hoffer
‘The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been derided as fools and madmen.’
— Aldous Huxley
‘Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.’
— Thomas Huxley
‘First a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim they themselves discovered it.’
— William James
‘So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you. ‘And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’.’
— Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple Computer)
‘Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.’
— Samuel Johnson
‘The mind, I have discovered, is very clever. As soon as it recognizes that it is entering territory where it is not in charge, it becomes very protective. It quickly begins inventing reasons to stop, because it does not want to let go.’
— Michael Jones
‘New ideas are not only the enemies of old ones; they also appear often in an extremely unacceptable form.’
— Carl Gustav Jung
‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
‘Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.’
— Robert Kennedy
‘New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.’
— John Locke
‘The human race is divided into two sharply differentiated and mutually antagonistic classes: a smal l minority that plays with ideas and is capable of taking them in, and a vast majority that finds them painful, and is thus arrayed against them, and against all who have traffic with them.’
— H. L. Mencken
‘An age is called dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.’
— James Michener
‘The greater the obstacle the more glory in overcoming it.’
— Jean Baptiste Molière
‘There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.’
— Christopher Morley
‘It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses.’
— Kenichi Ohmae
‘Human inventiveness is overwhelming human adaptiveness. Our ability to judge lags behind our ability to create.’
— Robert Ornstein
‘We have met the enemy and they is us.’
— Ashleigh Brilliant
‘If anyone has a new idea in this country, there are twice as many people who keep putting a man with a red flag in front of it.’
— Prince Philip
‘Ah good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.’
— Pablo Picasso
‘A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it..’
— Max Planck
‘But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.’
— Carl Sagan
‘If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.’
— Carl Sagan
‘The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively not by the false appearance of things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.’
— Arthur Schopenhauer
‘Opposition inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.’
— Freidrich von Schiller
‘Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice
To change true rules for odd inventions.’
— William Shakespeare
‘There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation.’
— Herbert Spencer
‘When a true genius appear in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.’
— Jonathan Swift
‘There are none so blind as those who will not see.’
— Jonathan Swift
‘I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of
conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.’
— Leo Tolstoy
‘The mind likes a strange ideas as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with similar energy. It would not perhaps be too fanciful to say that a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. It we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.’
— Wilfred Trotter
‘Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.’
— Mark Twain
‘The man with a new idea is a crank—until the idea succeeds.’
— Mark Twain
‘There is a natural opposition among men to anything they have not thought of themselves.’
— Barnes Wallis
‘One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.’
— J. D. Watson
‘New and stirring ideas are belittled, because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises, "Why, then, are you not taking part in them?".’
—H. G. Wells
‘In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.’
— Oscar Wilde
‘He who rejects change is the architect of decay.’
— Harold Wilson
‘Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.’
— Aristotle
‘Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.’
— St. Francis of Assisi
‘Impossibility: a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.’
— Napoleon Boneparte
‘Every noble work is at first impossible.’
— Thomas Carlyle
‘"There is no use in trying," said Alice. "One can’t believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven’t had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."‘
— Lewis Carroll
‘It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible.’
— Arthur C. Clarke
‘The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.’
— Arthur C. Clarke
‘When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.’
— Arthur C. Clarke
‘It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.’
— Walt Disney
‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’
— Arthur Conan Doyle
‘I have learned to use the work "impossible" with the greatest caution.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.’
— Epictetus
‘It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.’
— Robert Goddard
‘In two words, impossible!’
— Samuel Goldwyn
‘It’s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities.’
— Samuel Goldwyn
‘The impossible is often the untried.’
— Jim Goodwin
‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’
— John Fitzgerald Kennedy
‘Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.’
— Charles F. Kettering
‘The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke-screen of impossibility.’
— Charles F. Kettering
‘Th’invention all admir’d, and each, how he to be th’inventor miss’d; so easy it seem’d once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.’
— John Milton
‘However far modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.’
— Lewis Mumford
‘What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.’
— Theodore Roethke
‘The difficult is that which can be done immediately; the impossible that which takes a little longer.’
— George Santayana
Power, rights and slippery slopes
The world we're in is a slippery seesaw of wealth, poverty and power. At one end are the super-rich and at the other are people on the streets, dying of hunger. And as one steps over the other a slippery slope wobbles beneath them.
Economic imbalance is a natural order where some, by dint of diligence or fortune find, themselves more comfortably off. In the reversed situation, misfortune and a limited motivation moves others down the economic scale. And so imbalance occurs.
But what of duty and rights? Do the wealthy have a duty to share their relative fortune? Do those who have less have a right to more?
The lessons of the world point to imbalance as the natural order. Even in socialist countries there is a powerful elite. Paradoxically, it takes capitalism to give a voice to minorities and those in the lower echelons.
Barry Oshry, in his book 'Leading Systems' describes his 'Power Lab' experiments where he took a group of volunteers and put them into a hierarchical power structure. Across many experiments everything happened, from revolution to egalitarian inclusion, yet the result was always the same. Some people worked harder and thought more whilst others felt they deserved more and put in less effort. The result was always a ruling elite and a grumbling proletariat. This balance was not static, however, as sometimes the elite took too much and sometimes the lower group wanted too much and revolution occurred, yet before long another hierarchy would arise. The greatest stability and contentment was in a system of controlled rights, much as the modern capitalist democracy, where sharp differences were still seen, but revolution was staved off by limited sharing.
A perplexing question today is where people are given and expect more rights than is perhaps healthy, demanding support and disproportionate reparation for random slights, whilst the wealthy both flaunt their celebrity and live increasingly fearful and guarded lives. Power is the hand of social control, whether capitalist or socialist. When it slips from a central, accountable government then it tears at the fabric of society. When the media bosses manage public opinion and inflate celebrity envy, when global companies serve greedy shareholders as they plunder the planet, it is perhaps not surprising that individuals manipulate the law for Machiavellian ends and social trust spirals down a slippery slope towards revolution or worse.
‘Let the mind be enlarged…to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind.’
— Francis Bacon
‘Few minds wear out; more rust out.’
— Christian Bovée
‘Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigours of the mind.’
— Leonardo Da Vinci
‘To be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is to apply it.’
— René Descartes
‘Nurture your mind with great thoughts.’
— Benjamin Disraeli
‘What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.’
— Thomas Alva Edison
‘Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who read too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.’
— Albert Einstein
‘Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.’
— William Hazlitt
‘A mind stretched to a new idea never regains its original dimension.’
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
‘The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.’
— Dee Hock
‘The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.’
— Carl Gustav Jung
‘Clear your mind of can’t.’
— Samuel Johnson
‘The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.’
— John Keats
‘The mind is its own place, and, in itself, can make heaven of Hell and a hell of Heaven.’
— John Milton
The mind ought to sometimes be diverted that it may return the better to thinking.’
— Phaedrus
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.’
— Plutarch
‘What a waste it is to lose one’s mind—or not to have a mind. How true that is.’
— Dan Quayle
‘Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.’
— Eleanor Roosevelt
‘I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.’
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
‘You give birth to that on which you fix your mind.’
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
‘The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.’
— Aristotle
There are few more well-known or powerful speeches that that given by civil rights leader Martin Luther King on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.
The most famous paragraph, embedded in the middle of the speech is as follows:
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today."
So lets analyze this for the linguistic power.
Speech words Analysis
I have a dream that one day The dream is a frame for the future and sets the stage for the rest of the words. 'Dream' is vague aspiration. 'one day' starts to make it specific.
this nation will rise up A hint of revolution, a threat to white people, that may be scary but is tempered by subsequent words.
and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." A direct quote from Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President and author of the Declaration of Independence.
Will be accepted as right by everyone. Lends gravitas to the speech.
Creed' has religious connotations.
Implication that this is not true today, over 150 years after it was said.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia Repeating the 'dream', hammering home the hope for the future.
'red' hints at blood, implying pain, struggle and injustice. Georgia symbolizes the South.
the sons of former slaves 'slaves' implies injustice and is a highly evocative word for both black and white people (albeit in different ways).
Bringing up slavery suggests that it is still relevant today.
and the sons of former slave-owners Slave-owners were white. Black and white are thus brought together. Repetition of 'slave' hammers home the point.
'Sons' implies both the weight of the past and the familial obligation.
will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. After the tension of the previous words, this offers reconciliation. 'Table of brotherhood' is a homely metaphor (both table and brother) and triggers feelings of comfort.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, Repeating the 'dream' phrase again to complete a triple.
'even' implies that Mississippi is one of the worst examples of racism. Yet this, too, is included in the dream.
'state' points at the formal State organization, noting that racism is institutionalized there.
a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, The southern state is hot. This is converted into oppressive heat in this powerful metaphor.
will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. Release again. After a tension-filled early part of the sentence, it ends with hope.
'transformed' implies deep change.
I have a dream that my four children The dream metaphor again. Now it is turning from a triple into a theme.
Children are always evocative. 'my' makes it personal to King and hence also personal to everyone listening.
will one day live in a nation Evoking the whole country - not just the south.
where they will not be judged by the color of their skin 'judge' is a word associated with oppression, which is mentioned earlier.
'color of skin' points to the heart of the matter.
but by the content of their character. Again, a softener at the end. Note the 'c's that alliterate 'content' and 'character'. 'c' is also a percussive consonant that bangs out the message. (the 'b's of 'but by' also have this effect).
I have a dream today. Ending as beginning, bracketing the whole paragraph.
Note that this is said on a rising upswing, not as a declining completion.
This is impressive stuff, but what is missing, that adds even more power?
First, there is the remarkable emotion in King's voice and body as he made the speech.
Secondly was the context, in the heart of capital city, on the steps to the memorial of the President who defeated the Southern states over the issue of slavery.
Thirdly, the zeitgeist of the day, the feeling and flavor of perpetuated slavery of black people in the continued racial bias, their rising up against this and the gradual realization of guilt in white people who stood by and did nothing. It was King's words and actions that prodded Kennedy into taking up the banner.
What was missed by some, was that King's address had a very strong message for white people, possibly as primary targets. Whilst he hinted at revolution, his words were mostly about peace, thus offering a vision into which everyone could buy.
All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.’
— James Allen
‘The soul never thinks without a picture.’
— Aristotle
‘If you strike upon a thought that baffles you, break off from that entanglement and try another, so shall your wits be fresh to start again.’
— Aristophanes
‘If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right.’
— Mary Kay Ash
‘The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.’
— Marcus Aurelius
‘I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.’
— James M. Barrie
‘The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress. If you go down just one corridor of thought you never get to see what’s in the rooms leading off it. ‘
— Trevor Baylis
‘I carry my thoughts about with me for a long time, often for a very long time, before writing them down.’
— Ludwig van Beethoven
‘Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.’
— Henri Bergson
‘Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?’
— Yogi Berra
‘No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.’
— Niels Bohr
‘Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.’
— Niels Bohr
‘Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.’
— Edward de Bono
‘Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.’
— Ray Bradbury
‘The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.’
— William Bragg
‘Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?’
— Jacob Bronowski
‘With our thoughts we make the world.’
— Gautama Buddha
‘All that is is the result of what we have thought.’
— Gautama Buddha
‘We are what we think.’
— Gautama Buddha
‘If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.’
— Marc Chagall
‘We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness
—either enforced or voluntary. The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself-and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.’
— Agatha Christie
‘The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don’t have access to most of human experience, and if you don’t have access to experience, then you’re not going to be able to think properly.’
— Noam Chomsky
‘To think is to live.’
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
‘A ‘new thinker,’ when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought.’
— F. M. Colby
‘I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plants and seaweed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than which causes it and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.’
— Leonardo Da Vinci
‘I think, therefore I am.’
— René Déscartes
‘Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.’
— John Dewey
‘We only think when we are confronted with a problem.’
— John Dewey
‘Nurture your mind with great thoughts.’
— Benjamin Disraeli
‘A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels.’
— Albert Einstein
‘We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course powerful muscles, but no personality.’
— Albert Einstein
‘Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.’
— Albert Einstein
‘The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them.’
— Albert Einstein
‘Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who read too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.’
— Albert Einstein
‘The world’s greatest thinkers have often been amateurs; for high thinking is the outcome of fine and independent living, and for that a professional chair offers no special opportunities.’
— Havelock Ellis
‘Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if he has a headache.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘Thoughts rule the world.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘What is the hardest task in the world? To think.’
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
‘Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.’
— Henry Ford
‘The more you think, the more time you have.’
— Henry Ford
‘Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think creation’s.’
— E. M. Forster
‘To cease to think creatively is but little different from ceasing to live.’
— Benjamin Franklin
‘We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.’
— James Fulbright
‘All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.’
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‘If I look confused, it’s because I’m thinking.’
— Samuel Goldwyn
‘Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well.’
— Robert Heinlein
‘Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.’
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
‘Most of one’s life...is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.’
— Aldous Huxley
‘Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.’
— William James
‘A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.’
— William James
‘The intellect can intuit nothing, the senses dcan think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.’
— Immanuel Kant
‘The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes.’
— Søren Kierkegaard
‘People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.’
— Søren Kierkegaard
‘Nature gave men two ends–one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then, man’s success or failure has been dependent on the one he uses most.’
— George Kirkpatrick
‘Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don’t bite everybody.’
— Stanislaw Lec
‘The thinker dies, but his thoughts are beyond the reach of destruction. Men are mortal; but ideas are immortal.’
— Walter Lippmann
‘Thought takes man out of servitude, into freedom.’
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
‘A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.’
— Michaelangelo
‘I think like the species I am studying, whatever it is. If I am watching a lizard, I become the lizard. Gazing ath the water at a pike, I become the pike.’
— Desmond Morris
‘Even a thought, even a possibility can shatter us and transform us.’
— Friedrich Nietzsche
‘Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sideral. Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him. For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.’
— Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus
‘If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.’
— George S. Patton
‘Change your thoughts and you change your world.’
— Norman Vincent Peale
‘Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.’
— Lawrence J. Peter
‘The mind ought to sometimes be diverted that it may return the better to thinking.’
— Phaedrus
‘The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow.’
— Eden Phillpotts
‘Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.’
— Henri Poincaré
‘I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.’
— Terry Pratchett
‘When one is painting one does not think.’
— Raphael
‘I did not think; I experimented.’
— Wilhelm Röentgen
‘Many people would rather die than think; in fact most do.’
— Bertrand Russell
‘When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.’
— Salman Rushdie
‘Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.’
— Carl Sagan
‘Flout ‘em, and scout ‘em; and scout ‘em, and flout ‘em; / Thought is free.’
— William Shakespeare
‘Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.’
— William Shakespeare
‘There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
— William Shakespeare
‘This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy.’
— William Shakespeare
‘Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.’
— George Bernard Shaw
‘I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.’
— Socrates
‘Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no-one else has thought.’
— Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi
‘To his whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.’
— Henry David Thoreau
‘As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think BIG.’
— Donald Trump
‘We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.’
— Mao Tse-Tung
‘They can do all because they think they can.’
— Virgil
‘No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking.’
— Voltaire
‘Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.’
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
Napoleon Boneparte (1769 - 1815) was born one of 13 Corsican children. He was sent to a French school run on military lines. Small and weak, he won respect through organising war games and maths and science. Never to be an original thinker, his strength lay in the acquisition and exploitation of knowledge.
Lucien, his brother said, presciently, in early letter: 'I have always discerned in Napoleon a purely personal ambition, which overrides his patriotism...He seems to me to have a strong leaning towards tyranny.'
In the army
He joined the army in a artillery regiment, from which experience he learned the power of cannonry and later made great use of them in warfare.
The revolution and war with British in 1793 was his opportunity to gain power. He wrote a political pamphlet supporting the revolution. He gained charge and displayed skill in the retaking of Toulon where he created the 'battery of men without fear' and recruited many to this bold enterprise. After a 7000-man assault, the British fled.
In the battle, he was bayoneted in the thigh, which helped display his courage. As a result, he was promoted to brigadier-general.
He was driven by personal gain rather than duty. Early on, he killed 200 demonstrators to gain favour with authorities, when other soldiers had turned down the request as immoral.
After further action he was given control of the army in Italy, where he reinvigorated a demoralized army and won many battles. After this, he was sent to Egypt, where after two battles he was defeated by Nelson at the battle of the Nile. Nevertheless, e stayed in Egypt to improve their infrastructure.
In politics
Predictably, the revolutionary government fell into corruption, leaving the country ripe for dictatorship. He was installed as 'consul' with several others, but before long, he was First Consul.
He did much good, reforming the corrupt judicial system, created the Banque de France, restructured financial policies, and made education a public service.
He believed the French preferred glory to liberty and slowly replaced revolutionary fervour with enthusiasm for his own person.
Like Julius Caesar, he thought about himself above all else. He did not believe in the pre-eminence of 'The People' and mocked the ease with which he could control them with gesture and display.
He projected a careful mix of the grand and the common, using .every means of propaganda available - the press, war bulletins, the pageantry of a noble empire, the artful creation of his own legend. He would lie as frequently as he thought necessary to ensure success.
In 1804 in a huge ceremony (including a coerced Pope) he crowned himself Emperor. He also appointed many of his family as princes, kings and queens.
He lacked Alexander's political sensitivities and distained all who he had beaten. Eventually, his dominating tactics led to the conquered peoples revolting, and he had non-stop fires to put out.
With troops
He knew how to motivate troops, though was cynical about it.
In his address to the French army in Italy he said 'Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed...Rich provinces and great towns will be in your power, and in them you will find honour, glory and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will you be found wanting in courage and steadfastness?'
He impressed the officers with his knowledge and strategies, yet his real success was less about his knowledge of rules and strategy, as by by a profound knowledge of human nature in war.
He said 'A general's principle talent consists of knowing the mentality of the soldier and gaining his confidence.' -- Napoleon. Yet he mocked the ease of motivating with simple rewards. Once, when handing out medals, he said 'with such baubles, men are led.'
Nevertheless, he tried to visibly be a soldier amongst soldiers, a father amongst children. He could talk to them, collectively or man-to-man, in their own terms.
In his wars, he lost an estimated 2,500,000 men dead and showed little sorrow at having done so. He was ruthless, self-centred, and arrogant, and yet had the ability to make his men love him even when he sent them to his deaths.
Like other famous commanders, he castigated and punished those who failed him.
Making war
He built a huge military machine, with 400 officers in a central headquarters staff, and about 500,000 in the Grande Armée that was able to fight on a number of fronts at once, allowing him to rapidly expand his empire.
Like Alexander, he took builders, administrators, etc. with him, ruling wherever he was and creating a glorious history.
In 1800 he attacked and subdued Austria. He gave up on invading Britain after Trafalgar (1804). In the Battle of Austerlitz he defeated a massive Austrian/Russian force with a much smaller group through brilliant strategy, well executed.
Prussia declared war in 1806 and were defeated in 1807. France declared war on Portugal in 1807. Spain rebelled then also and it took seven years to put them down.
In 1812 he invaded Russia, which was a famously bad idea. Following scorched earth and Russian winters, he retreated, losing most of his best troops in the process. Of 650,000 that set out, only 75,000 returned.
In Waterloo, his weakened army was beaten by Wellington's Brits, with (if it be known) a little late help from the Prussians.
The eventual end
He was exiled to Elba in 1814 after a forced abdication, but he was back in 1815 and defeated the Prussians again.
After Waterloo, it was the real end and he was sent to St. Helena, where he wrote his reminiscences and died six years later.
After his death, his renown grew further and he was given a state funeral in Paris.
Critical factors
• He had a mathematical mind, phenomenal memory, boundless energy and prolific imagination.
• He studied enemy personalities, terrains, supplies and manoeuvres and would consider all eventualities before acting.
• He could persuade and inspire (although he was cynical about it).
• He learned deeply from lessons of history and applied strategy well.
• He was courageous and daring, although he led more from the general's position on the hill.
• He managed his image well, which was his first concern.
When mass movements are formed, they often go through a number of stages. These stages were described by Donovan and Bowers:
Petition
People who believe in a cause petition the sources of power (government, industry, etc.) to meet demands that are, rather annoyingly, just a bit too far for the holders of power to concede. This gives the petitioner reason to continue the game, getting angry at the powerful and finding a personal power through their own helplessness.
Promulgation
Fired up by the non-cooperation of those in power, the agitators now seek allies and like-minded individual (or, perhaps, those who are easily led). They hand out leaflets, they hold rallies, they feed stories to the press and generally propagate the idea that those in power are unreasonable and dangerous.
Solidification
With the success of promulgation, the group solidifies into a coherent organization that revolves around its leader. Social grouping starts to appear and a hierarchy is created to provide a system of control. The leader will, of course, seek to maintain the group and stamp his or her identity onto the group.
Polarization
One way the leader maintains control is to retain focus on the enemy, who is increasingly cast as bad and evil, which naturally leads to the conclusion that the members of the movement are good and righteous. Key 'flag' issues are identified and receive intense focus. Individuals in the opposition are singled out and vilified as embodying all that is bad about them.
Non-violent resistance
Initially, resistance is likely to be non-violent and passive, with actions such as 'work to rule', strikes, sit-ins, blocking access and cold-shouldering the opposition. A common subversive goal is to goad the opposition into violence or at least to force them to call the police. The group will then manipulate the media to make themselves appear harmless and helpless whilst the opposition is spiteful and immoral.
Escalation
This may then lead to public confrontation, where confrontation may be aggressive, at least in language. Threats may be made. Property may be damaged. It is less and less possible to converse and even mediators may be rejected.
'Gandhi vs. guerilla'
The non-violent elements within the movement may now go to the opposition and plead with them to concede, lest those who are more violent give in to their basic drives and take even more radical and dangerous action. In effect, this is a variant on the hurt and rescue theme.
Revolution
Finally, when the opposition refuse to concede, the movement will take to the streets, publicly breaking the law and using violence with anyone who stands in their way. They act as a mob, and people who would normally be peaceful get drawn into the violence and commit acts of which they may later bitterly regret. Yet whilst the leaders of the group can sustain the maelstrom, primitive drives are whipped into the fore and revolution has its day.
Businesses know all about competition, at the very least from an experiential viewpoint. Ask any businessperson about competitors and they will throw their hands up in horror at the unfairness of it all. Large companies that outspend small companies. Far-Eastern companies where employee costs are a fraction of those in the West. Cartels and tacit oligopolies that sew up channels and block new entrants.
The battlefields of competition have stretched around the globalized world and back into beleaguered corporations, where the battlefront has spread from products and marketplaces back inside the company to costs and business models. In the desperate fight for survival and competitive advantage, sacred cows have been slaughtered and burned.
Yet there is one last frontier which pioneers have been exploring for many years, and which many others have studiously ignored. For those companies which can crack the deep nut of human psychology, there are many benefits to be gained.
The product battlefield
The battleground of competition for many years was in the laboratories and design shops where superior products were developed by legions of mysterious boffins and nerds. If you could dream of a great idea and then build it, then you had a fair chance that they would come in their droves. The product battles have continued to rage to this day, although constantly escalating competition means that success is not as predictable as perhaps it once was.
Many contributions have been made to sharpen this domain. New approaches to creativity and invention have been introduced, from Synectics to TRIZ. The notion of core competencies has been developed to cluster the full range of abilities on which product skills are based. And the seeking after key talent has continued, although perhaps not with at the frenetic pace of the technology bubble of the 1990s.
Quality and costs
With the ‘Japanese Invasion’ of the 1970s and the global quality movements that followed, the focus moved through product quality to internal cost, and none more so than in the latest incarnation of Six Sigma, where the statistics of Shewart and Deming are taken to new heights. The simple and alluring premise is that if you can measure and hence drive out unnecessary costs, then the savings will go straight to the bottom line.
Some companies have made great strides in this domain, although the report card is mixed at best and controversy still rages over the real cost of quality. With regular reports of 70% or more of such programmes failing to give a fair return on their significant investment, there is clearly further improvement to be made in the house of improvement.
Business models
The Japanese approach also brought with it the Deming Prize, which inspired the Baldrige and EFQM models and awards and, by implication, the design of the business. The dot-com boom reflected in the extreme this thinking of business models as competitive advantage and, although some succeeded, many were simply wishful thinking.
Strategic innovation continues, despite regular declarations that strategy is dead. Fortunately, we know better now.
If we cease to think about how we run our businesses and how we think about strategy, then the dismal result will no doubt be a steady loop back around to the beginning.
It’s the people, stoopid!
Perhaps it has been trumpeted less, but there has also been a third battlefield that started long ago and is now building to a more visible crescendo. This last frontier of competition is in the dimension of human thought, feelings and behaviour. From the humanist writers such as Maslow and MacGregor that every MBA knows, we have long been educated in the importance of the human side of the enterprise, yet only more recently are there signs of a wavefront building in this area.
The competition for customers has been growing for a long time, with the more traditional sales and marketing developing through areas such as branding, loyalty and customer relationship management. The move to get inside customers’ heads, both to discover unfulfilled needs and to inject new ones, continues its onward march, despite a long line of protests that stretch from Vance Packard to Naomi Klein.
People are endlessly important within the company, from the talent in the research lab to the customer-facing people who communicate the brand every day. Perhaps more important still are the managers and leaders, whose decision competence and clarity of communication are essential to keep the wheels of the business turning in the right direction.
A massive waste
In terms of costs to the business, people-related waste is probably greater than many other costs put together. Just consider the number of meetings where nothing happens, or the demotivated people and their ideas that never saw the light of day. The scope for business improvement around people is massive.
In fact many of the problems in other competitive domains are also related to people. The ability to invent is not only about brain power, but also the creative climate we build. Change programmes fail regularly due to lack of commitment in the right places and limited interpersonal skills of people working to create the changes. Even business models that assume people are selfish and have limited motivations end up in self-fulfilling prophesies.
The manic fear
Although much has been done around people, there is a great deal more scope for creating significant competitive advantage through a deeper understanding of what makes us tick, and in addressing the problems that beset our mental functioning.
What has prevented many of us from looking deeper into the mirror is the historical horror we have inherited of anything do to with mental dysfunction. Any problems exposed would quickly lead to shunning and worse, so we brush our neuroses under the carpet, colluding with others to make such things undiscussable.
Still seen by many as ‘soft stuff’, the domain of human psychology is viewed with suspicion and fear and many managers are still in denial about its potential. Yet its day is coming.
The rise of psychology
All around us is rising evidence of the next revolution, where those who dig deepest into the human mind will improve their products, decrease their costs, and design organisations where people happily contribute to their fullest extent.
The psychological barrier is already crumbling, as a look at the numbers of students studying the subject shows. Thirty years ago, psychology was an obscure subject studied by dropouts and doctors. Twenty years ago, psychology was a niche subject. Ten years ago it was being studied by those who could see its place in the future order. Now it is a mainstream subject, and as technology graduates struggle to find placements, those who can work at the human coalface have many choices before them.
Mind in the workplace
Psychology has also reached the workplace, and organisational psychologists can be found in many leading companies. Even the deeper elements such as social anthropology may be found in some places.
Emotion in the workplace used to be faced with vehement denial, but it is beginning to become a legitimate topic. Subjects such as Emotional Intelligence are being used as an integral part of assessments for leadership and management positions. Gender, racial and other differences are being treated with more concern and the emotions therein have achieved greater legitimacy.
Cognitive dysfunction is also being recognized and treated rather than being punished. Counselling is more acceptable than it once was and you may even find people sent to anger management classes rather than immediate dismissal for their outbursts.
Although few executives have their own therapists, a surprising number have the next best thing – a personal coach, many of whom have either formal psychological backgrounds or have studied popular topics such as NLP. ‘Coaching’ is an acceptable metaphor from sports domains, but the underlying subject is clear: the mental functioning of the manager being coached.
Bringing it all together
Towards the end of his long working life, W. Edwards Deming was working on the principle of ‘profound knowledge’, although many of his acolytes did not seem to hear what the grand old man had to say. His basic thesis was that for success in business, we need a deep understanding of three things that interact on many levels: variation, systems and psychology. He expounded the virtues of variation for much of his life, and his lessons now inform SPC and Six Sigma. Systems has been taken up particularly in MIT and popularised by Peter Senge. And psychology, as above, is at last reaching the mainstream.
Competitive advantage comes not just from one approach or another but, as Deming indicated, from a deepening understanding of multiple domains and the applied combinations that that can be derived from this knowledge.
The final frontier
The final frontier is a closer hurdle for some companies than many others. When they leap that last obstacle, the way will then be clear to create a deep and profound difference that gives them a sustainable advantage. What shape those companies will take is not fully clear, but some of the effects of people who have gained a deeper understanding of themselves and other people might be predicted. In particular, a deeper understanding of one another will lead to transparency and trust that cuts through interpersonal transaction costs.
Understanding and resolution of interpersonal differences also leads to greater happiness, and a happier, more understanding workplace will more energetic, focused and productive. Happiness itself will thus be viewed not with suspicion but as a metric of success.
The last frontier is out there. Competitive advantage awaits. Business success awaits. The only question now is who will cross the line and who will be left behind.
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