Startup effect: how to improve your working environment?

how important is the environment? Let's start with a real case that happened at the national level, and the protagonist is Albania. Why should we start with a case at the national level? As I said before, many theories in organizational behavior are very extensive, ranging from teams to countries.

after the disintegration of the Soviet union, many eastern European countries went into decline, including Albania. It was originally a planned economy country, and it was not until the 199s that the market economy was introduced. But the market economy is not working well here. The infrastructure is broken and no investors want to come here. Coupled with the imperfect judicial system and corruption, the people have no confidence in the country.

In 2, Albanian GDP was US$ 11.4 billion. Today, it is only one tenth of that in China and Tibet. If you had come to this country and seen the state of the people, you would have felt that there was no hope in this country.

At this time, a man named edi rama was elected as the mayor of Tirana, the Albanian capital. He is not a politician, but a painter. He has held art exhibitions in many parts of the world and won grand prizes.

we know that to activate a market, you need resources and money. But lamar really has nothing in his hand. At that time, the municipal financial system could not even afford to repair sewers. What should we do? Lamar chose his familiar way, that is, painting. It's just that his canvas is very special, which is the outer wall of buildings in the city. Rama wants to start painting buildings and save Albania.

if you tell an economist about this plan, he will think you are crazy. I'm not making assumptions. When Lamar painted the first building, a French foundation made a negative suggestion, because the color did not meet EU standards, which would give the wrong signal to the market. By the way, Rama used pink. His answer is humorous: please look at all the junk around you, they are not EU standards.

Lamar not only painted all kinds of dusty houses with bright colors, but also painted graffiti several tens of meters high. At first, he did it himself, and later, he launched colleges and universities to set up a "graffiti" group. In this way, the campaign to beautify the city lasted for eight years, and it got bigger and bigger. The city has become a colorful palette.

At the same time, Lamar borrowed money from international organizations to build squares and clean up illegal buildings. He later summed up his policy as two things: restoring public space and lighting the city with color.

when you hear this, you must want to ask, will it work? Amazingly, it really worked. From 2 to 28 before the financial crisis, driven by the capital, Albania's GDP increased fourfold, with a growth rate comparable to that of China. In 213, Rama was elected Prime Minister of Albania. Later, he accepted the invitation of TED and gave a speech. I strongly recommend you to see it. The name is: How to recapture the city with color.

ok, let's stop here. It is of great value to sociology and economics. The economy is usually related to many factors, but the case of Albania is very special. Rama has almost done one thing to improve the environment, and there are not many interference options, so it is a perfect case to study the role of infrastructure in promoting the market.

but the market is also made up of people. Activating the market is essentially activating people's creativity, imagination and enthusiasm. How does environmental change do this, and what is the logic behind it? This requires the study of organizational behavior, which is also the focus I want to tell you today.

We talked about attitude, emotion, personality and other factors, which all affect people's performance. But have you ever thought about what is affecting them? The answer is that you are getting the word you often hear, cognition. Cognition is the process of feeling and judging when individuals are in contact with the outside world, and it is the starting point of interaction between individuals and the environment.

give an example. People living near the equator have low risk appetite. This is because they can get food easily without taking too many risks. Long-term knowledge of the environment has shaped their character.

in other words, cognition leads to behavioral preference. But it's not over. You can understand cognition as an information processing circuit formed by the brain for a long time. People obviously have not only one circuit, but many. In different situations, the brain will start different circuits.

let me give you an example. In the workplace, you must know that there are two kinds of meetings, one is a meeting that requires everyone to speak freely, and the other is a meeting that doesn't require everyone to speak and just sit there and listen. A mature person in the workplace must have formed an understanding of these two kinds of meetings in order to adopt different strategies.

but if he doesn't know in advance what kind of meeting this is, how can he ensure that he can judge right when he comes up? The answer is through the environment. For example, there is a long table in the conference room, and at the end of the table there is a chair where the leader is obviously sitting, so it is the second kind of meeting. If there is a round table, it is the first one.

please follow me and keep thinking. After working in the workplace for a long time, our judgment can be completed automatically. Once you enter the meeting room, you can accurately judge the type of meeting without deliberate thinking. We will also joke that I can smell the "smell" of the meeting, which is the reason.

This process in which the brain helps you make judgments without telling you is summarized by a familiar word called subconscious behavior. Initiating a cognitive model through the subconscious mind is called priming effect. When you come to the conference room and see the square table, a cognitive model is started, and you know to keep your mouth shut.

priming effect is the most important concept to be delivered to you today. The environment starts our cognitive model, and the cognitive model leads to our behavior, which is manifested in attitude and emotion in the short term, character in the long term, and the concepts we have talked about, such as innovation and career commitment. In the case of Albania, color has activated people's positive emotions in the short term and various creative behaviors in the long term.

Here I want to talk more about past lives who started the effect research. It was first born in the medical field. It has been found that people who have lost their memories will suddenly think of something because of the change of environment. You must have seen it in the movies. Recent studies have found that priming effect is actually widespread.

Of course, the existence of the subconscious is still controversial in academic circles, and more evidence is needed to support it. But it can be used to explain many incredible phenomena.

For example, British scholars found in 214 that some companies can increase their work efficiency by 15% just by using green plants to add decoration. According to the previous explanation, green plants can produce more oxygen and promote the physical and mental health of employees. But how much can that little oxygen do? Obviously it doesn't make sense. We can understand it by introducing the priming effect.

For another example, let's go back to the case of Albania. The municipal government is corrupt in dealing with civil affairs. In order to improve the situation, Lamar hopes to borrow money to build a spacious civil affairs reception hall, so he needs to borrow money from the World Bank.

The German official who received him didn't understand that you should spend money on training and ideological education to deal with civil servant corruption. Lamar explained that the reception room now is actually a closed pavilion with a small black mouth on the wall. The people handed in thick materials from their mouths, and then waited in fear for what they needed to be handed out from inside. They lined up outside, and there was nothing they could do.

In this environment, even if the staff inside are changed once a week, they will still collect money and engage in corruption. Even if high-quality Germans come inside, I am afraid it is the same. This has nothing to do with morality or genetic lineage, but because there is no sacred feeling here at all, and people outside can't feel respect.

I don't know if Lamar has studied organizational behavior, but obviously, he is practicing the priming effect we just mentioned.

ok, what does the priming effect inspire the managers of the company? Let me make three points.

first, environmental stimulation is a prerequisite for behavior, and its influence is not additive, but directly determines whether it exists or not. From this, we can imagine that the office environment of a creative design company and a legal consulting company cannot be the same, because employees need to start different cognitive models.

second, we should try our best to let employees who often cooperate with each other enjoy the same office environment. Why is this? Remember * * * enjoying the mind? * * * Enjoying the environment is very important for establishing * * * Enjoying the mind, because it starts a similar cognitive model. That's why telecommuting can't become the mainstream of the company.

Third, you should consciously mine environmental information related to high performance to improve the office environment.

For example, a Japanese consulting company found through investigation that yellow can cheer people up and stimulate people to generate inspiration; Gray is easy for people to make compromises and feel tired; Purple can stimulate creativity, but it is easy for people to make decisions rashly and so on.

For another example, one of my colleagues found in the experiment that if people think about some difficult questions, such as, "Do people have free will?" Or live a little, "should husband and wife put their money together?" Then people's dialectical thinking will be started, and he will be more rational and more peaceful in his later work.

from this, we can imagine that if such simple questions are made into slogans or pictures and hung in the office, can they also promote rational decision-making?

It is difficult for us to find the biological mechanism of these problems before the breakthrough of brain science. But this does not prevent us from consciously collecting information or handing it over to the human resources department.

1) The environment starts our cognitive model, which in turn leads to emotional and behavioral preferences;

2) Because of the priming effect, environmental stimulation is a prerequisite for behavior;

3) Try to let employees who need cooperation * * * enjoy an office space, which is conducive to the establishment of * * * enjoyment mind;

4) From now on, you can consciously collect information and improve your office space.

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