Microactions and other interesting trends.....

Whew! It's been a long time since the last blog post!

The good news - it's been an inspiring time! Work has just gotten really interesting, and tellingly, this happened when I started to focus more on Product and less on being a consultant!

However, it's also been a week of learning more about what is out there in the social media and social good world. New York is many things, but it is definitely at the forefront of shaping popular and Gen Y culture, kind of like a magnet which attracts everyone at the cutting edge of their industry, whatever that might be.  These are just a few of the concepts / trends I have observed recently and found interesting...

1. Microactions

Have any of you heard of microactions? I hadn't until last week. It is the idea that taking tiny steps can move people forward without threatening their sense of control. Its an effective way of enacting change without overwhelming people. Microactions disarm our resistance to and fear of change because we commit to something so small and inconsequential that we are not worried about failure, and we're guaranteed success in completing this tiny action. They're much smaller than actual steps, and often seem almost ridiculous. For instance, I learned of a life balance coach who used microactions to help an overweight client who absolutely refused to exercise. She writes: 

"As the director of the Hypertension Research Center at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center I prescribed exercise for all my patients who wanted to lose weight. I remember one woman who hated to exercise. I honestly think she would rather wire her jar shut or eat a strict diet of earthworms. At each visit I instructed her to walk for thirty minutes each day and at each return visit she confessed she had not exercised at all. We tried every behavior modification trick in the book, but no amount of punishment or reward could get her to comply.

So I tried a microaction. I asked her if she could simply get dressed to exercise three times a week. She looked at me as though I was radioactive. “What a worthless thing to do! Let me get this straight. I am supposed to just get dressed to exercise? A sweat shirt will not burn any calories!”I agreed but replied, “Just this week. Humor me.”At her next visit I asked her if she had tried the “just get dressed “ prescription.“Yes I did.”“Great!. Now I want you to add one minute of walking,,,”She interrupted me with a crafty grin. “I walked for thirty minutes three times this week.”“But I gave you strict instructions not to.”She laughed. “I felt so stupid standing there, all dressed up with no place to go, that I decided to walk just a little. Five blocks from home I discovered that exercise is not so bad. My neighbor joined me and now between the verbal venting and the hiking I come back feeling wonderful.”

I don't know who said this, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step (and I know from personal experience that the first step is often the hardest.) Microactions are being used more and more in startups and on websites to get users to do what you want. However, they are obviously useful across a range of applications.... 

2. If we ran the world.....

This is an amazing idea that I came upon when reading about microactions. Their mission, in short:

IfWeRanTheWorld is a real-world experiment in tapping good intentions and turning them into tangible, do-able microactions that anyone and everyone can help you to do. All of us can achieve more than one of us, and everything starts with a microaction.

I have just added my own microaction to the site - please check it out! Danz, you will love this one. 

3. "Reading the news" is no longer about reading the Times or the SMH

My friend Danz would be the first person to tell you that she now goes to Twitter and FB for her latest news updates. Traditional practices of reading the newspaper or watching CNN are becoming outdated as we demand more and more tailored news - news that is relevant specifically to us and our interests and lifestyles. We don't want to read about what some editor thinks is important, rather we want everything potentially newsworthy to be filtered through our own lens so we're left with the most pertinent and interesting information, without having to wade through a whole raft of things we care nothing about.  

Nowadays, Gen Y'ers tend to establish a collection of blogs or e-publications on the areas they are interested in and scan those every morning. Say you are really into American politics. Sure, the NYTimes may report on Capitol Hill  or feature the biggest news items in the main section, but the idea is that niche political sites will report on the same news but do it better, because that is their area of expertise.  Others 'follow' someone on Twitter who they know has the most up to date information on the issues they find compelling. 

In general, I would say, our world is becoming more and more tailored to each of us, as companies figure out how to leverage the vast datasets of personal information stored on the web - just look at the Google ads which appear on your side bars when you are reading your Gmail.......it's kind of spooky! There is even a new term now to describe these datasets: "big data"! McKinsey Global calls it "the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity." Check out their report on Big Data here.