Noise, sludge and nudge.
Newsletter #48. 23 Feb 24

Noise, sludge and nudge.

Spend more than 20 minutes in an office and you'll see plenty of noisy, sludgey mess. And not just from the VP Sales who's all noise, and no poise.

Noise and sludge are a critical affliction to the health and value of your business. Yep even yours that's totally special and different to all the others.

Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler are both Nobel Prize winners in Economic Sciences.

Noise comes from Kahneman.

It's all those extraneous things affecting judgement. 'The problem is humans are unreliable decision makers; their judgments are strongly influenced by irrelevant factors, such as their current mood, the time since their last meal, and the weather. We call the chance variability of judgments 'noise'. It's an invisible tax on the bottom line of many companies'.

Ooooof. Easy mate. There's people being triggered here.

Noise is different from bias. Bias is a permanent filter rather than a random factor. Noise impacts the bottom line by causing significant variations in decisions.

Sludge is from Thaler.

It's a hidden influence, affecting anyone operating in a 'decision architecture'. Which is everyone from the teaboy to CEO. Sludge is any part of the architecture making decisions slower, stickier and slimy-er. 'Sludge … is nasty stuff that makes it more difficult to make wise choices'.

The answer? Nudge mate.

Humans are irrational, ego-filled and reactive. So if you say 'keep off the grass', they'll walk on the grass. Because we're all arseholes. Yep, even the nice ones are.

Nudges are from Thaler again.

Nudges in the decision architecture, help make better choices. Nudges simplify processes, personalising them or removing inefficiencies.

There can be up to a 50% variation in decision making with noise and sludge present. Just think what 50% would do to your bottom line.

And you're not an idiot... who doesn't want to put a smile on the CFO's face by helping the bottom line?

Impress the rest of the c-suite; step outside your marketing lane and talk to the CEO and CFO (maybe even C3PO) about the noise and sludge in the business. Push them, tickle them, caress them... whatever it is, nudge them in the right direction.

Underdog brands, need Underdog thinking


  1. Kahneman in 2002 and Thaler in 2017
  2. 'Noise: How to Overcome the High, Hidden Cost of Inconsistent Decision Making' by Daniel Kahneman, Andrew M. Rosenfield, Linnea Gandhi, and Tom Blaser, Harvard Business Review, October 2016
  3. 'Nudge: The Final Edition' by Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein, Penguin Books, 2021


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