Working

I recently read Working by Studs Terkel.  This, or other Studs writing, is a must-read for anyone who calls him/herself a true Chicagoan.  Working was written in 1974 and as the subtitle implies is about People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do.  As I read the book, I constantly thought about 1974 Chicago and this era for my grandparents, who were residents of this city for most of their lives.  My grandfather owned and operated a vacuum cleaner repair business on the southside of the city at this time.  I wondered how he might have responded to Studs' queries about his work at that time, but I suspect he would say that he was motivated by his desire to fix things, help others, and provide for his family.

While I read the book, I also focused on the motivations of the stockbrokers that were profiled and tried to relate each of them to my own experience in a stockbrokering environment. It seems that there have not been fundamental changes in what motivates stockbrokers over the past 30 years. The first stockbroker, David Reed Glover, is motivated by a sense of responsibility to do right by his clients. He says, “when you’re dealing with an individual’s money, it’s a terrific responsibility.” The second stockbroker, Ray Wax, seems to be 100% driven by money and believes that the market is rigged in the favor of the major brokerage houses. He seems to be somewhat less ethical than Glover and less motivated to do the right thing for his clients. He comments that the ethics that he was forced to learn about the business is “all mumbo jumbo.” I have witnessed both of these motivations at work in my interactions with brokers and I could probably think of a Glover or Wax that I've encountered in my own work. Typically, it seems that brokers are motivated by some combination of money and a sense of doing right for their client. In my experience, it is a very rare case when one motivation severely dominates the other, especially in the case of responsibility trumping financial gain.

Stickiness

I recently read Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  The book identifies the six elements that make an idea more likely to "stick."

1. Simplicity - The idea should be simple, yet profound.  Think proverbs.
2. Unexpectedness - The idea might violate people's expectations in order to generate interest and curiosity.
3. Concreteness - Our brains are wired to remember concrete data.
4. Credibility - You need ways to help people test ideas for themselves.
5. Emotions - People will care about our ideas if we make them feel something.
6. Stories - Hearing stories allows us to form a more complete mental catalog of critical situations that we might find ourselves in.

Yes, that acronym spells SUCCES!  This made me think about examples of stickiness in the "real world."

An example of unexpected stickiness is the fairly recent phenomenon of “icing” which was made popular on certain college campuses but has made its way across the country and even onto Wall Street.  Icing is a drinking game whereby an individual is forced to drink a bottle of Smirnoff Ice while on one knee, sometimes in a humiliating fashion.  The game was even featured on CNN Money/Fortune.
While icing has certainly gone viral in the short-run, it remains to be seen if this phenomenon will be sticky in the long-run.  It does contain some of the necessary principles of sticky ideas:  

Simplicity:  It doesn’t get much simpler than drinking a beverage.  

Unexpectedness:  This idea was truly out of left field.  Who would expect a beverage that is typically thought to be consumed by females to be the focus of a drinking game that is played primarily by males?  

Emotions:  Icing does promote specific emotions like fear (about getting iced) and happiness (remembering fondly how you pulled off a prank on a friend).  

Stories:  The viral nature of icing was accelerated by the now-defunct website because the website allowed users to post pictures/videos about their icing experiences and share stories.  The website was recently removed by Smirnoff.