Human Risk b(u)y the book

Humanizing Rules In The Wild

This week sees the release of my new book ‘Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics & Compliance’. It's officially out on Thursday, but as you can see from the headline images submitted by readers who've already got their hands on it, it's already out in the wild.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a book about human risk if there weren't some human risk lessons along the way. Before I share those, a heads up: at the end of this newsletter, there’s a special reward for anyone who pre-orders the book (from any bookstore) on or before the release date. Now for those lessons...

Lesson 1: Humanizing means being more human

The main question people ask me about the book is understandably, "what's it about?". Of course, the answer is obvious from the subtitle ‘bringing behavioural science to ethics and compliance’.

But that’s only easy to understand if you already have some idea of what behavioural science is and care about ethics or compliance. Regular readers will know I’m not a fan of the ‘c-word'; I explain why in the book.?

So, to maintain their interest, I now summarise the book in the following way:

“How to get people to do what you want without pissing them off.”

It’s mildly inappropriate — so whatever you do, don’t tell my publisher I describe it like that — but it's a far more engaging way of explaining what it’s about than the actual title. It's also far more reflective of the book's tone, which is designed to be easy to read. As one person neatly put it, 'that one-liner has me sold!'.

This brings me to the first lesson: if we want people to take ethics and compliance seriously, we need to engage them, not assume they're engaged.

Just because the topics are important to the organisation doesn't automatically mean our employees will care about them. In fact, the more we implicitly presume they will, the more risk we run that they won't.

Lesson 2: We need to see things from the perspective of our target audience, not from our own

When people asked me where they could get hold of the book, I pointed them toward Amazon —I figured readers with Prime, who wanted quick delivery or owned a Kindle, would go there anyway — but also noted that other booksellers would be stocking it.

As it turned out, it's not the people who ordered from Amazon that got their books first. In fact, my feed was filled with people who had done that and were being told they'd only get their books...well, take a look for yourself!

That's not something anyone wants to see! Which is why I got onto my publisher and they've now fixed it, so if you have or want to order from Amazon, you'll be getting it as soon as its released. Oh and you can now also place Kindle orders!

Why am I sharing this? It's a good illustration of something I explore in the book. Human decision-making isn't always logical or rational. Our views on things are based on perception not reality. If I know a book is being released in March, and I'm ordering from the world's biggest bookseller, I don't expect to have to wait until April; particularly if I know other people are getting their copy quicker!

If the release date had been in April, no-one would've minded. But quite rightly, the perception of people who'd ordered from Amazon and were promised an April delivery, was coloured by knowing the book is out in March!

As Behavioural Science guru Rory Sutherland puts it?(and thank you to Mike Fox for reminding me of this):

"The perception of time, as measured by engineers, is measured in seconds. In humans, it's kind of measured in pain, or boredom, or irritation”

It's a lesson we need to remember in Ethics & Compliance. What matters when it comes to complying with rules or being ethical is not what people should feel, it's what they do feel. If we design our programs around the former, we'll misjudge the challenge we're facing. It's the latter that's relevant.

Lesson 3: We’re all learning here

Which brings me to the final lesson. One of the joys of getting the book into the wild is that I can hear what other people think. One of the pains of no longer being able to edit it, is that new ideas keep occurring to me and I'm always finding things I wish I'd written slightly differently. But at some point I had to stop working on it, and set the book free.

Fortunately, it's not a book that tells you how to solve your problems, so it doesn't need to be perfect. Instead, it's there to inspire you to think differently and creatively about the challenges you're facing. Some of the ideas in the book might not work where you work. But like smart compliance frameworks, it's not a hard set of rules to be slavishly followed.

I want people to read my thoughts, challenge me and help me to be better.

I'm as excited abut learning from you as I am for you to read the book. Which is why I'm enormously grateful to people who've already bought it. And I want to encourage more of you to do so.

Which brings me to...

Competition Time!

Pre-order the book before the release date, and you’ll get exclusive access to extra content that will help you get the most out of it. Plus, you could win:

• one of three free virtual ‘Humanizing Rules’ masterclasses for you or your team;?and
• one of three Human Risk-branded mystery items that I refer to in the book as one of my favourite?gadgets ever.

To enter, just forward a copy of your proof of purchase from any bookstore dated before March 24th to [email protected] and over the next few weeks, you’ll get access to the content.

[Your privacy matters, so if your proof of purchase contains any personal information like your address, don’t worry. Once we’ve checked your receipt, the only data we’ll keep is your name and email address, purely for the purposes of sending you book-related content. Oh and contacting you if you’ve won a prize!]

And when you've ordered it and it arrives, do send me an unboxing photo as I love seeing it in the wild! Then let me know what you think.

Until the next time!

Christian

PS If you've not checked out the Human Risk podcast, then do visit www.humanriskpodcast.com.