Power Tools!

I’ve been hounding you on this topic for a while now. My mostly dormant but longtime interest in “little things” with enormous impact was rekindled after the publication of Nudge, Sway, and a couple of other books. With this post, I’m offering up a fully annotated 100-slide presentation on the topic.

The heart of the presentation is over 20 examples of Tiny Tools with Enormous Impact—from increased effectiveness in oil-finding (put the geologists and geophysicists in the same room) to dramatically reduced crime rates (patch the potholes, fix the broken windows, clean the streets) to effective dieting tools (e.g., small plates, infuriatingly slow elevators). The examples per se are of little importance—they are merely indicative of the sorts of things one can concentrate on. The toughest part of the message is that to do much with this you need an “attitude.” An attitude that this sort of thing can work, and a willingness to screw around and screw around until you get it right—”do it right the first time” addicts are doomed!

On the other hand there is a lot of good news about the process:

(1) Amenable to rapid experimentation/failure is “free” (no bad “PR,” no $$ down the drain).
(2) Quick to implement/Quick to roll out.
(3) Inexpensive to implement/Inexpensive to roll out.
(4) Huge multiplier.
(5) An “Attitude” required—not a one-off “program.”
(6) Does not, by and large, require a “power position” from which to launch experiments—this is mostly “invisible stuff,” below the radar, that most don’t care about on the front end.

Take a look.
Give it a try.
Become a professional “nudgist,” practiced in the Art of Nudgery.

Tom Peters posted this on April 15, 2009, in Execution.