How do we behave in the face of uncertainty? Sometimes, we take the information we have (or what we think is information), and we form assumptions about what has already happened. Then, we jump on the bandwagon we thought we saw.
It’s a way of rationalizing the statement, “I have no choice.”
“If we speak up, we’ll be targeted.”
How might we circumvent this unfortunately learned helplessness? Can we rediscover our own agency? I find Oliver Burkeman’s take on this refreshing, or perhaps better put, bracing. He quotes Sheldon B. Kopp: “You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.”
If the bandwagon isn’t there, the willingness to make a choice can lead in a whole new, positive direction, rather than amplifying our most dire assumptions.
This pulling out of the rug from “I have no choice” does not guarantee we achieve desirable results. But it gives us a chance to be humans in the best sense.
The website tools that are available now allow companies to measure how much time—down to the second!—that a visitor spends looking at each individual webpage on the company’s site. If most visitors flee the page immediately, that’s a pretty good sign that the page isn’t delivering what they wanted or expected.
A good first question for the people at the company to ask themselves at this point might be “why not?”
Imagine an organization asks the members of its community for feedback on its draft strategic plan, a plan that is taking many dozens of hours of meetings to generate. Imagine there is only a paltry amount of feedback, with many members of the community remaining silent.
This is real feedback, but it often goes unnoticed or underappreciated. Now, the visitors to a company’s website may be customers, and the community members of the organization may not be, but an organization needs members to keep functioning, much like a company needs its customers or a living being needs its cells.