Nudge · 2-minute read
Five minutes with a real beneficiary can transform motivation for weeks. Reading about the same person does almost nothing.
University fundraising callers who spent five minutes with a student whose scholarship their calls had funded went on to spend 142% more time on the phone and raise 171% more money a month later. Callers who only read the student’s letter showed no change.
Routine work slowly disconnects people from its consequences. Meeting the person on the other end restores that connection in a way slides and quotes don’t.
The research: Grant, Campbell, Chen, Cottone, Lapedis & Lee (2007), Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Adapted from Nudges at Work by Tareef Jafferi, shared in partnership with Happily.ai.
Invite a real customer or beneficiary to speak with a team for five minutes about how their work changed things.
Give one day a month back to employees to invest in themselves, their teams or their community — around a shared theme.
Feedback makes performance worse surprisingly often. Whether it was positive or negative barely matters — what matters is whether it points attention at the work or at the person.