Winning at referendums (and life!), part 2

Earlier in the year, I wrote a post in the aftermath of the Scottish Independence Referendum, Brexit and Trump votes about winning at referendums by introducing how to pass exams based on some personal experience, here it is:

Winning at exams, tests, elections and referendums

The reason I started there was that when you are going through life there are certain points at which passing exams is very important: High School, University, Professional accreditation and qualifications and especially so in sectors where continuous professional development is part of a regulated professional framework. Passing a standard or test can be the difference between progressing to university or not, getting a promotion or not and getting a job or not.

However, the ability to do well in an exam is based on hard work, effective revision, ability, memory, being focused enough to do well in a particular time box and is often an objective score based on you Vs the exam.

There is another skill which isn't so widely taught in school but becomes more important if you want to succeed in elections, referendums and indeed life.

That is the skill of convincing others.

How to Win Friends and Influence People came out in 1936 so this is hardly news. However, the importance of convincing others cannot be understated. If you are self-employed and can convince people to buy your product or service, you are likely to be more successful. If you are an entrepreneur, convincing people you are part of a great team will more likely get you the investment you seek. If you are employed, convincing your manager to give you a promotion could get you the recognition you seek. If you are going for a job, convincing the panel you are the best candidate (supported by those exam results) will help you secure the job over other similarly qualified candidates. Life is in effect a sales pitch, even for going on that first date and persuading someone you are a trustworthy person who the other person can enjoy spending time with and your prospective partner is happy to make an emotional commitment in you. You can pass all the exams you like but without friends, colleagues, a support network and people around you, people who want to work with you or recommend you then you will have a great CV and pile of certificates but will struggle to reach anything like your full potential.

Sadly however, this skill of convincing others which is so vital to success in so many areas is often not taught. This can have big consequences not only for the person and their emotional development but also the fulfilment of their life aspirations. It can also have a big effect in politics, referendums and deciding the future of a country.

The first article focused on the fact based stuff, this article is much more about the emotional side of why understanding people, seeing it from their perspective, being emotionally intelligent and being able to convince is the complementing balance which leads to wider success especially in adulthood.

The Scottish Referendum of 2014

In 2014 in Scotland there was a referendum in Scotland about Scottish independence and Scotland voted approximately 55% to 45% to stay part of the UK.

The "yes" campaign was generally seen as positive and grew its support immensely. It started from around 30% and ended up on 45% based on a grassroots movement and against utter hostility from the UK state, a national press which was almost exclusively anti-independence or neutral and we even had the Pope giving a view. This was an excellent result in the face of a biased "mainstream" media. However, it was still a loss.

So, what went wrong?

My earlier article talked about eliminating the barriers between you and getting 100%. The Yes side did not close that gap sufficiently. In scenarios when you try to eliminate undesirable outcomes (to try to get 100% in an exam), the "no" voters was the obstacle to victory which the yes did not reduce effectively enough. After all, if no-one voted no, then yes would get 100%. They only needed 50%+1. The elimination of "no" should have been the goal and it wasn't. There was a lot of talk about having conversations but not much about the nuts and bolts.

The skill of convincing others. To persuade them to give you a job, to persuade them to be your customer, to make you attractive as a person, to persuade voters to vote for you. Understand the other side's doubts and fears and eliminate them and then they won't have anchors tying them to their existing stance and they will be much easier to persuade. The "yes" side will be more persuasive and then they may well come over to your side, but you need to remove the anchors first.

The positivity of "yes" (together with some stunning videos) was essential but it wasn't enough by itself. Consider these arguments used by the "Better together" camp advocating a "no" vote;

• I am worried about Scotland leaving the EU
• I am worried about jobs in Scotland (e.g. defence jobs on the Clyde)
• I am worried about the future Scottish economy
• I am worried about my pension
• I feel a hard border would be created with England and I have family there and it would be difficult to see them
• I am concerned about a Scottish currency and how this would affect my finances or travelling to England.
• Many other tactics were used to instil fear. Project Fear was born

All of the above, together with project fear's name itself revolve around emotions.

Many of the reasons people vote for politicians are also around emotions, such as:

• I have confidence in this party's ability to deliver
• I trust the candidate
• I like their policies
• I believe there will be better outcomes for my family
• I believe society will be safer
• I trust this party to run the economy

Politics is an emotional battlefield about winning hearts and minds, getting inside the minds of people on all sides and when you have their confidence you are well on the way to winning their vote.

Look at some recent politics contests and see how they were dominated by emotions:

• Trump's Presidency: "Crooked (untrustworthy) Hillary"
• Brexit vote: "EU migrants will take your job - take back control", "Worried about the NHS - take back control and fund it better"
• Project Fear in the Scottish Referendum: "Your pension isn't safe", "There is no certainty on currency", "The oil price is volatile and there is a worrying black hole"

When you connect with people's emotions, this will influence their fact based thinking. For further reading see: System 1 and System 2 in Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman.

What does this mean in practice?

Amazon focused on the customer. We should focus on people first and pay attention to other political groups second. If you focus on political groups you can easily be dragged into a bun fight and generally voters become disinterested (another emotion) and you'll find it harder to connect with them.

I like the analogy of a set of old fashioned scales.

Each side represents a side of the argument, the heaviest side wins. Imagine the scales filled with rocks of differing sizes and the cumulative weight of each side determines the heaviest. In a two way political campaign the heavy side represents the one with the most votes.

Each rock represents an issue for which it is the most important issue for a group of people, the weight of the rock represents how many people believe it to be the #1 issue for them. There may well be multiple issues important to them, but for now I'm focusing on the top one. Once you address the top one, the others may change order or priority (in Agile this is re-evaluating the priority of the backlog after a sprint deliverable).

So the strategy is

1. Identify the rocks (the obstacles)
2. Identify the size of the rocks
3. Prioritise them using WSJF which summarises in this context as (opportunity size/effort needed) or number of voters believing an argument/difficulty of persuation.

In doing this, the argument which counters each fear on the opposing side will lead to less people being attached to that argument, and the weight on that side will decrease whilst the weight on the other side increases as people come across. When the other side is light enough, you win. The obstacles to winning are sufficiently out the way. Using the nudge principle (Richard H. Thaler, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics) sometimes it's the cumulative small stuff that makes the difference rather than big stuff or everything all in one go.

Good luck to everyone building bridges on 4th November in Edinburgh. I hope the obstacles are identified, prioritised and a path to removing those emotional impediments is laid down and don't forget to win friends and influence people!

thanks for reading

Craig