Action Influencer 4: they have made public commitments they want to be consistent with
David Meade, the American end-times conspiracy theorist describes himself as a Christian numerologist. Meade grew to relative fame when he predicted that the Nibiru cataclysm – a disastrous encounter between Earth and a large planetary object – would take place on September 23rd 2017. On September 21st, he was so confident that his predictions were about to be borne out that he described in an interview how he’d seen Nibiru from his house. Strangely, NASA hadn’t, but that wasn’t important. His logic was sound. He was certain.
However, September 24th dawned, which unfortunately for Meade put a crimp in his theory. No matter, though, he now predicted that the month of October 2017 was going to be super shitty instead. Nuclear war, the poles shifting and earthquakes. Again though, November swung around. Now, it was going to be March 2018. Again, lots of bad things predicted plus end of the world etc. Can you guess what happened? Then it was going to be April 23rd 2018. On April 19th he was feeling confident enough to say that people who disbelieved him were ‘fake news’, but he did adjust his prediction to say that the while the world wouldn’t end per se on the 23rd, it would be the start of the rapture, which would take place sometime between May and December. Fortunately for the people looking forward to their New Year’s Eve parties that year, the rapture did not put a dampener on things by appearing, and instead New Year’s Day 2019 dawned. And so it goes on. Never wrong, just not right yet. You might have thought that after multiple attempts to identify the end of the world and on multiple occasions being disproved Meade would acknowledge he was wrong. Instead, the opposite happened. As shown in other end-of-the-world-like examples, rather than people starting to doubt the accuracy of these predictions, instead they become more convinced that they are right and that some external influencer had occurred that they hadn’t accounted for.
People have a built-in need for internal consistency. If someone has expressed a like or dislike of something – particularly if they’ve done it in a public forum – they feel a need to continue that narrative. Posting online that you’ve joined a gym as a new year’s resolution is easy. Saying you will be going weekly is great. Saying you’ve given up by mid-February is difficult. It’s one of the reasons why when people have a plan to change or do something different that making a declaration of intent is likely to increase your chances of success. Joining a gym without telling anyone makes it easy to just cancel your subscription silently. Personal trainers are a great way of continuing with a fitness commitment if you don’t have the motivation yourself. By making a commitment to someone you are activating a need to follow through rather than let them down.
Commitments are the voluntary agreements that people make to act in a particular way. Compliance, by contrast, is when they agree to act in a particular way due to some external compulsion and to a much lower degree of personal engagement. Commitment is a powerful trap. Politicians know this, which is why they’re famous for their non-committal answers and obfuscation of intent. But politicians also see the power behind them to galvanise a movement. Once a commitment is made, its hard to go back. When we make a decision, we all like to feel that its the right decision. We try to rationalise it with ‘evidence’ and confirm that we’ve made the right choice by shaping facts to fit our perspective. In essence we brainwash ourselves to remove any cognitive dissonance and doubt. You may have seen this when someone, particularly a public figure, makes a mistake and tries to double down on it and explain why it actually isn’t a mistake. Over time this type of self-justification can paint people into a corner where they find the values they’re standing up for to be at odds with where they thought they stood, but with no path to retreat.
People and organisations make commitments all the time from free will. While commitments need to be made voluntarily, when someone does make a stated commitment it can be a powerful tool to influence behaviour and drive action. Consider these two communications to get a meeting:
Option 1: I saw in your annual report that you’re trying to reduce your supply chain to net zero in the next five years. Can I walk you through a demo of how we help organisations do the hardest part of that by halving datacentre carbon within 12 months without adding cost?
Option 2: We help enterprise organisations reduce their carbon by optimising their datacentres. Can I walk you through a demo of how we could halve your carbon within 12 months without adding costs?
Option 1 reiterates a public commitment and provides a route to realise that goal. Option 2 makes the same offer of a meeting, but doesn’t connect it to a previous pledge. Neither would be impossible to decline, but option 1 cannot be declined because they don’t want to achieve that goal. There is an implicit alignment of values that makes it more likely that a meeting would be accepted, giving a foot into the door. You’ll find this technique used within good ABM programs where there is strong alignment between an account team and meeting an account’s goals.
Consider in the above situation how the dynamic might be different if this conversation occurred in a public forum or social media. An organisation states their intent to negate carbon production within five years and the CEO of another organisation replys offering to have some element within 12 months. The external pressure for internal consistency forces the first organisation to follow up on the offer, even if it goes no further later. A commitment – particularly a public, written or broadly communicated one – is hard to turn your back on.