Signal from WIIFM

And every day is a chance to be Starting Different Personally, as a Business with your Team. You can use the brain’s own shortcuts and align your Promise with your team’s Behavior  using proven Tools…  The Tools of Engagement.”

Scientists know more about the human brain now then ever before.  The brain is only 2 to 3% of our body’s mass and yet it uses 25% of our body’s energy.  It’s constantly firing. Think of it as a pharmaceutical factory producing drugs to support every decision we make – sort of an on-demand compounding pharmacy. The brain is constantly scanning the environment looking for cues, triggers, shortcuts, especially patterns.

Because the Brain has two goals – Goal Number One, is survival. Staying alive. And goal number two, is saving energy – in other words to use as little energy as possible to achieve goal number one. Scientists have terms to describe these two goals… the first goal SURVIVAL what scientists call a “cognitive bias” – humans have a bias towards survival. Researchers have identified nearly two hundred cognitive biases – the shortcuts we use to make decisions to stay alive. If we understand these shortcuts, we can apply them where helpful to ourself and others to make more of a difference in the world— we will summarize them in our Tip Videos.

And regarding the second goal, saving energy, what scientists call “cognitive cost” refers to the amount of energy we use to make a decision, the more energy used, the more costly a decision.. Here’s one example…. a tip for you from brain science– 

Because the primary goal ALPHA is survival, everyone is listening to the radio station WIIFM – what’s in it for me? Give them the bottom-line up front. Share with them the outcome at the very beginning of your interaction. 

Now if we can take these tips and put them into specific models to help us remember them, and build frameworks around them, we are far more likely to generate the habits we want and to reinforce the behaviors that make us who we want to be.