Okay people, let's not underestimate the power of personal communication, especially that which comes from individuals that you respect. I was recently persuaded today to "get blogging or else" (okay, I mentally added the 'or else' part, but I could feel the threat between the lines. Some negative interaction with a baseball bat or other blunt instrument might have been in my near future if I hadn't heeded the advice and posted this). So, as with donations, membership, getting timesheets in (remember the power of the tag team duo in Office Space asking Peter where his TPS reports were?), and everything else, it is a lot more effective to get someone that you already know to get you over the inertia hump and into the land of action. Why is it key to keep this in mind? We need to make sure that we are always conscious of the fact that we, humans, are normally lazy and in a state of inertia and maintenance mode by default and rarely want to take the effort to learn something new, change, modify, and let's face it--evolve.

This is what makes the introduction of a new UI, new process, new button that says "Submit Payment" versus "Next" just so hard for users to adopt once they have learned one system or mode of operation. However, we must also be aware that if the change results in an identifiable benefit, that it is worth the effort and we must look to the user network or the user pool or sphere/circle of influence or however you want to phrase the same idea to get some element in software or any system, framework, idea, feeling, etc to be recognized, adopted, and sustained.

I am fascinated with the concept of change and organizational behavior as a whole. I've studied the same idea in many different disciplines over the years. In philosophy, this is commonly known as the paradigm--the model of thought that one group maintains and through which all stimulation is filtered before the individual produces a composite picture and belief of the stimulus. In social marketing, this is the beliefs, mores, culture, and demographics that a population holds about certain stimuli. In business, this is the understanding of the organizational culture and velocity of the culture so that you understand what will/won't fly. Whatever you want to call it, it's all the same thing to me. The fact is this: if I don't understand your background, where you are coming from, how you think and operate, I've got no chance in either effecting change, let alone predicting how you will react to new stimuli or planning a method of adoption that will be successful.

In my case, Mr. Blog Cheerleader, knew exactly how to effect change in me. He hit on some core beliefs that I hold--open access to information and transparency --and bam! here I am at 10:51 on a Friday night posting a blog and realizing that it feels damn good to write again. All I'm saying is don't forget the 'be careful what you ask for'line of thought when you ask a frenetic thinker/writer to "let loose" and "go for it" in a blog.

So understanding the backgrounds and motivations and precepts--all key pieces to consumer behavior--fascinate me and I am glad to see that this part of marketing is finally filtering more and more into the field of product marketing and management with people realizing that they need to understand these factors in order to build useful products that are not only adopted but successful (and hey, showing a profit on them is never a bad thing to accomplish as well if you are already at it). We are seeing this type of demand in need for consumer behavior knowledge and predictive abilities in the for-profit and NFP markets through interest in analytics and other BI types of activities, but it remains to be seen if people really understand yet that data and patterns and transactions don't get you much without a solid understanding of consumer behavior as well. I think people still think they can skip this step and just go right to a report that will spit out the right answer or direction as to what to do. However, the power is in the question, not the results. If you don't know the right questions to ask and only have a lot of data results that don't shed any light on core issues, what does that get you? Just a lot of data and some useless pie charts or pivot tables. What I'm interested in is how do I use consumer behavior theory coupled with peer-to-peer interaction/social networking to increase market penetration and user adoption rates? Maybe we need to clone Mr. Blog Cheerleader and get one in every organization in the world?