hidden value

My peers have told you about SERVice stars. Designed to exercise social proof and consistency, they are publicly posted paper dinosaurs where you commit to a certain number of service activities. Stickers are added for every day you volunteer to keep track of your progress to your goal. I must admit that beyond that transparent connection to FBE principles, I thought they were pretty gimmicky. Not that I didn't like them or think that the dinosaurs were the cutest thing ever, I was just skeptical about their ability to help. Well, the FBE principles predictably pulled through and we could see people signing up because others had or committing to particular events because they'd signed up on our dinosaurs.
What I really didn't expect to see was a direct value exchange. However, a couple days after SERVice stars came out I had a friend approach me about her lack of stickers. When I got the chance I gave her her sticker. Today she saw it and got extremely excited. "my STICKER! Ist so SHINY!!! and sparkley!!...: so on and so forth. I don't doubt she could have sold the knitted work she made at Friday service for enough to buy her own pack of sparkly stickers. For some reason though, it was so special to her to receive this gift from us. Reciprocity, sometimes the act of giving back is more important than what is given.

Leaving a Legacy

Time flies when you do something you love. It’s sad to see the end of these amazing three weeks. Over that small time, our team has definitely seen a change in many peoples’ attitudes towards community service. We’ve taken feedback, and used the concept of effectuation to change the current approach towards Friday service time and make it more engaging, based on what we heard at our study break. We’ve “motivated the elephant” through the creation of our SERVice star program, giving the rider a sense of direction: towards reaching their goal of activities participated in.

Now, our primary goal is to leave a legacy-have a tangible packet of information to pass along to the SERV board. This will go alongside the video Brendan discussed in his post, which is more oriented at the general student body than the actual “masterminds” behind the planning of activities. The main contents of our packet will include strategies on deciding Friday service activities-things to keep in mind, especially in terms of student interests. We’ll include the importance of contacting other organizations and clubs on campus, and, eventually, tips on how to get outside organizations involved. If we can continue the projects we’ve started-from the SERVice stars and Friday Service information poster in the dining hall to projects integrated with other clubs-I think we can make community service a part of an Oliner’s typical week.

You may think we’re overly excited about community service (is that even possible?). Yes, three of our FBE team are members of the SERV board, and maybe that does mean we have a bias, but we aren’t permanent parts of the board. I honestly believe that what we’ve changed- in both other students’ minds and our approach towards coming up with Friday service ideas-will be useful to the future members of the board, for at least some extended period of time. The excitement around the SERVice stars and the jump in participation in Friday activities are clear indicators that others besides the members of the SERV board have an interest in community service. It may be the SERV board’s job to offer a helping hand, but, ultimately, getting students outside of the board to lead projects is key to successfully keeping service alive and loved. We’ve created the tools-they just need to be continuously used.

Location, location, location

In real estate, one of the most important considerations is location. While not real estate agents, our FBE team also learned a lot about location in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago we held Friday service time in the WH1 lounge which is one of the more out-of-the-way lounges in West Hall. We had about 12 or 15 people show up to knit and watch a movie and (in comparison to most of the previous Friday service times) it was a pretty good showing. Then, last week, we held Friday service time in the lounge on the third floor of West Hall so that we would be out of the way of the Candidate's Weekend tours that go through WH1 and we ended up with 25 or 30 people watching the movie for Amnesty International that we were showing and either making posters for the Like This FBE team or knitting.
We usually hold Friday service time in WH1 partially because it's a little out of the way and it's usually empty during Friday afternoons meaning we're not taking anyone's works space. However, no one walks through that lounge unless they live in 1 North. On the other hand, everyone who lives on the third or forth floor has to go through the WH3 lounge and people from the first and second floors often go to the third floor to see what's happening. We don't always want to hold Friday service time in WH3 because people often use that space for other things on Friday afternoon and we don't want to kick them out of their space, but looking at the different turn-outs of the last two weeks is a good reminder of how important location can be.
It makes sense that we should hold Friday service activities in high-traffic areas because of social proof. The more people are doing something, the more others will want to copy them. This also goes along with the Heath brothers' saying of "rally the herd." By holding activities in the third floor lounge instead of the first floor lounge we were rallying people to participate by letting them see that others were already participating.
In a way, we were also directing the rider because many people wander aimlessly around WH on Friday after classes are done because they don't want to work and telling them that they should stick around to watch a movie or knit directs the rider and gives them something to do. So using social proof or rallying the herd and directing the rider are definitely good approaches to getting more people to come to Friday service activities.
Because social proof and directing the rider are good ways of getting more people to participate in Friday service, we got much higher participation levels in WH3 than in WH1. It is unrealistic to assume that we can always use the third floor lounge for Friday service because it is a public area that is used for a variety of activities, but we should always consider location when deciding where to hold Friday service because when it comes to getting people to do community service, along with finding a good spot for a restaurant, it all comes down to location.

Sustainability: Inspiring the Freshmen

As the FBE Challenge comes to a close, our team is really focusing on sustainability. One way that we plan on having a long-term impact is by developing a video centered on the question “What does community service mean to you?” We plan on asking faculty, staff, and students about the role they believe community service plays at Olin and what inspires them to volunteer. We will then show this video to the incoming freshmen during orientation or an OIE class and having a short discussion about community service at Olin (Nick Tatar agreed to let us show the video as long as we produce it well). The idea behind our project is to get the freshmen thinking about community service before they commit all of their time to other clubs and projects. A big observation we made throughout this process is the difficulty and inertia that comes with trying to make a change. It is difficult enough to get people to try something new but it is ever harder to get them to change their preexisting routines and commitments. This comes back to one of the six fundamental principles of persuasion, consistency. Right now students have already made clear commitments to clubs and projects so it has been hard to get people involved in community service especially this late in the school year.

However, we plan on using three of the principles of persuasion to get the incoming freshmen more involved in service. Through our video and a short discussion we plan on using the principles of social proof, authority, and consistency to get the freshmen involved in service and to keep them involved. First, the main principle of the video will be social proof. The freshmen will be new to Olin and looking for people to set examples. By playing the video and including a variety of members from the Olin Community, the freshmen will see how passionate some community members are about service and hopefully follow their lead.

Similarly I, along with two other students who are also consistently engaged in community service (Elizabeth Poindexter and Liz Threlkeld), will compose three of the ten members of the orientation staff. As members of the orientation staff we will be the first upperclassmen that the freshmen meet (the staff and freshmen are on campus for five days before upperclassmen arrive) and therefore I believe they will look to us as authorities on life at Olin and hopefully through the video and discussion they will see how passionate the three of us are about service and this will inspire them to get involved. However, we must ensure that we do not make the common mistake of assuming that others recognize our expertise. We must first establish our expertise before we attempt to inspire the freshmen.

As far as the principle of consistency goes, at the end of the video and discussion with upperclassmen we plan on presenting the freshmen with the option of filling out a Community SERVice star and pledge how many service activities they will participate in throughout the semester, similar to what we did for all Olin students this past week. By having freshmen pledge the number of service projects they will participate in, it will align them with their clear commitments by making these commitments active, public, and voluntary (with an emphasis on the voluntary). We don’t want to force any freshmen to pledge if they don’t want to. Also, by giving the entire freshmen class the option of filling out the service stars at the same time it will maximize the principle of social proof. If a hoard of people is filling out the stars, it is less likely that someone will walk out of the room without filling out a star.

Overall, we plan on getting the incoming freshmen thinking about community service and (through the service stars) get some of them to commit to service before all of their time is committed elsewhere. But getting the freshmen involved is just a small part of a much larger plan we have to revitalize community service at Olin. We also plan on presenting the SERV board with a packet of suggested changes that we believe will increase service participation. These changes will be more focused on getting the community as a whole involved and less focused on a specific group of students (i.e. the freshmen).

the cost of decision making

"There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does"
Daniel Pink at his TEDtalk.
Why do businesses and organizations have such inertia? I'm sure you've been a part of some leadership body that did things that seemed silly to you, but suggesting they change turned out to be a big ordeal. You've also probably experienced the singularly lousy feeling of realizing the same path you've always taken to the grocery store for the past ten years is actually five minutes longer than another, more scenic route. There is a reason this kind of things happens so often. If we consciously made every choice we were faced with, we would spend most of our energy just deciding. These routines and automatic responses save some us precious time to use on important things and decisions.
This principle holds true for groups too. I've been in groups where much too much of our time was spent on inconsequential decisions. Being thorough and being efficient is a tough balance to maintain. At what point should a group stand back and examine its routines. Is it best to wait till some external factor points you in the right direction, like the construction on your usual route to the store? Serv, the current organization in charge of service at Olin, has finally got some inertia. This is good because it allows it to do a lot of things on campus, but maybe it needs a couple iterations. One example is that serv says yes to everyone that asks the mfor help. THis is a great principle for an organization like this to have. Unfortunately the way they deal with this is to provide all these opportunities to the community at once in the digest and at the serv table. As discussed before, choices take a lot of energy. People continue to go with the choice they are used to which in this situation, is not participating. We hope to provide an outside opinion of serv. Without stopping up and slowing down the organization we can observe the sort of things serv is doing out of habit that aren't effective. In the end all we can do is give them advice and hope they listen.
How can you get other people to examine their automatic responses? How do you get others to change?Just as we are trying to ask serv to look at the choices they don't notice, serv is needs a way to ask peopled to look at the unconscious choice to abstain from Friday service. As can be seen in Jordyn's post we are trying to get their attention with dinosaurs (their elephants), then appeal to the rider with a very simple reasonable request to make a goal. There are other principles at play such as consistency and social proof. If we can get people to make that initial realization that there are new things they can do Friday afternoons instead of their routine maybe we can convince them it should be Friday service.

Too many Indians and Not Enough Chiefs

As we briefly discussed in class on Tuesday, one of the major obstacles we have encountered is the lack of individuals willing to lead service activities. Contrary to the popular phase “Too many chiefs and not enough Indians” we couldn’t seem to find any chiefs. To solve this problem our team brainstormed and used a combination of effectual logic, the principle of bright spots, and the necessity of motivating the elephant.

Applying the principle of bright spots, we asked ourselves the question “Where are there already successful examples of leadership that are worth emulating?” Quickly we were able to pinpoint the fact that student run clubs and organizations on campus were great examples of bright spots. We thought that these clubs and organizations were a great resource to explore because there were successful examples of individuals leading projects and (as a bonus) along with these leaders came a dedicated group of individuals. Here we were applying both the principle of bright spots and three of the principles of persuasion: consistency, authority, and social proof. Students had already committed to these clubs and therefore were willing to align with their pre-existing commitments. Students were also willing to defer to the “expert” (aka their club leader) and follow the lead of others.

Another applicable principle from class is motivating the elephant and that what looks like laziness is often exhaustion. During the study break I talked to several individuals who were passionate about different service activities but nearly all of them were not willing to lead the project. After delving deeper into why they were not willing to lead this project, I found that the reason for most of the students was they had attempted (either once or multiple times) to lead a project or a club and had some poor experience which ultimately led to them abandoning the idea. These individuals were exhausted from trying to rally students around their idea and others were just simply exhausted whether it was from school or other extracurricular activities. These students showed one of the problems involved with motivating the elephant they appeared lazy but in reality they were exhausted.

Overall our group has talked at length about the lack of individuals willing to lead. We’re working on fixing this problem by finding bright spots through on campus clubs and organizations but eventually, in order to make our change sustainable, we will need to reach out to those students not already leading clubs and motivate them (and their elephants) to lead service projects.

SERVice Stars!

[picture coming soon!]
We all say that feedback is the key to success; clearly, our group has tried to maximize feedback since our [awesome] study break. Even more beneficial is the combination of others’ ideas. For a little while, Steve had asked us to make something to put on display, to try and exploit social proof on a larger scale, such as hanging a poster in the dining hall showing those who participate in community service and when. At first, our team was a bit skeptical; ultimately, peer feedback we received last class made all the difference.
Last class, Steve had one representative from each team stand by their board area, in which we wrote about our bright spots and frustrations. I chose to stay, and had at least 6 people flock to me immediately. One suggestion shone above the rest: service stars. Our group chose to combine this idea with Steve’s idea of having a display in the dining hall, creating a goal-driven concept that we hope to make permanent.
To become a service star, you simply create a goal for yourself, and write it on a dinosaur. This dinosaur was then stuck on the “SERVice Star” poster [which is five feet long-as tall as me!] Each time you come to a service activity, you get a sticker next to their dinosaur, marking a step closer to your goal! We’re pushing this idea to be goal driven, rather than reward/competition driven.
We hope that by having a bunch of dinosaurs, we can encourage more people to join in, implementing social proof. I’m sure many people have walked by, and wondered what the poster of dinosaurs near the SERV table is about. This curiosity is what leads to progress in such a display. Another key concept is consistency-we believe people will want to earn those stickers to join their dinosaurs on the poster in order to meet their goals.
Wednesday the 2nd was our first day of pitching this idea-in the course of an hour, over 30 people had created their own service dinosaur! I had never seen such excitement at the SERV table before, over the entirety of this year. This new poster, along with the poster with information about upcoming Friday service activities, have given more life to the SERV table, helping us spread our love of service to others.