So what is it that drives these ‘rationalists’ of the
corporate procurement world? When you dig a little
deeper and ask them some provocative questions,
the process of buying business-to-business products
reveals itself to be anything but the straightforward,
rational process that its participants claim it is. Do they
buy the best product? No? Then perhaps they are not
driven by a rational need for quality. Do they buy the
cheapest product? No? So it seems they’re not driven
by a rational need for economy either. The truth is, if
they are lazy, they buy what they have always bought;
if they are fearful, they buy the best known brand
(remember, ‘no-one ever got fired for buying IBM’);
if they are the typically disengaged middle manager,
they don’t change things until someone higher up the
chain complains. Of course, the list of causes goes
on and on, but very few lead to the world of rational
decisions that Pascal promised. These compromised
decisions even follow us into our personal lives.
Beliefs are hard to shift
beliefs prove to be the cockroaches of the mental
world — impervious
to even nuclear attack!
So, if discipline is hard to maintain and our rational
minds are little help, perhaps we can enlist the help of
belief systems. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Yet this methodology — the shifting of belief systems
— has come to dominate in the spheres of leadership,
psychology, marketing, sales and performance
coaching.
We talk about changing our beliefs in such a casual
way that it makes us seem ignorant of just how
powerful these beliefs actually are. Many of our beliefs
have proved stubbornly hard to move in even the
slightest terms over the past few millennia and have in
fact led to wars, murder, family breakdowns and even
suicides. Nevertheless, it seems to be a logical place
to start.
One of the main problems with most campaigns
around behavioural change, be they commercial,
government or personal, is that we do tend to focus
only on shifting beliefs. We employ communications
campaigns, advertising, keynote speakers, audio
programs and the like. However, try as we may to
bludgeon our beliefs into submission with affirmations,
rational platitudes and emotional blackmail, the
A restaurateur once shared with us that if you have an
oversupply of a particular wine, you should present it
on your menu as the second least expensive option,
something they referred to as the ‘first-date’ wine. The
paying partner’s ‘logic’, they claim, runs along these
lines: things may not go well, so they don’t want to
waste money on the really good stuff, but of course,
looking cheap may decrease the chances of things
going anywhere at all. So they assiduously avoid the
cheap plonk and opt for the second most expensive
option (‘A very good choice if I may say so, Sir’).
Almost every one of us can name at least one thing
in our lives that we believe down to our toes is bad
for us, self-destructive, unhealthy or emotionally heart
wrenching. We know we should stop doing it and yet,
despite all our affirmations — sticky notes stuck to the
refrigerator, extra coaching sessions and seemingly
rigorous strategies to counter this behaviour — we
continue to do it.
Part of the reason for this is that our beliefs are very
much attached to our conception of ourselves. For
example, followers of the various religions do not
typically say, ‘I believe in the teachings of the Bible’
(or the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita the
Dhammapada)’. They are far more likely to say, ‘I’m a
Christian’ (or a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist).
For people who are of Jewish ethnicity and Jewish
religious belief this is no doubt even more selfdefining. What this means is, changing what you
believe is not as simple as … well … changing your
mind. It actually involves changing your
conception of who you think you are.