The Small BIG: Small Changes That Spark Big Influence by Steve J. Martin, Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini Page A

remove any psychological connections that may exist. This leads to an intriguing question. Might the negotiator ensnare themselves in the decision maker’s  commitments simply because they share a connection with them? And if this does happen, is the resulting outcome likely to mirror those experienced by Barry Diller and Max Bazerman’s students?
    In an attempt to test these ideas, social scientists Brian Gunia, Niro Sivanathan, and Adam Galinsky set up a series of studies. In one experiment, participants first read an account of a vice president of finance who had decided to invest $5 million in the consumer division of his company. They also learned that over the past five years that division had performed significantly worse than another division that he chose not to invest in. The participants were then told to imagine that they had just been appointed as the new vice president and consider how they would invest $10 million of new funds. However, before making their decisions, half of them were to spend a few minutes engaged in some “perspective-taking” by considering how the previous VP might have felt and thought as he made his investment decisions. The other half were simply told to be objective and not take into account the previous incumbent’s perspective at all.
    The results demonstrated that those asked to take the perspective of the previous VP were not only influenced by the previous poor decision, they were also more likely to escalate the previous commitment that had been made, typically investing 40 percent more in that division than the control group. Perhaps most interestingly of all, this occurred despite the participants being offered a $50 cash bonus if the decisions that they made led to the best financial outcome.
    But hang on a second. Today’s fast-paced and competitive business world is hardly conducive to undertaking our own perspective-taking, let alone someone else’s. So perhaps the procurement managers and buyers who are tasked with making decisions and negotiating on behalf of their organization can breathe a sigh of relief, confident in the knowledge that, in the absence of any deep connection, their performance is unlikely to be unduly affected.
    Further studies by the researchers showed that such confidence might be misplaced. In fact, they found evidence that even seemingly meaningless connections—such as sharing a birth month and graduation year—can be enough to lock individuals into another’s commitments.
    So what small changes might insights such as these prompt you to make to avoid falling into the trap of being influenced by others’ commitments? Imagine that you manage the procurement department in your organization and are responsible for a team of negotiators and purchasers. The results of these studies suggest that you take steps to select the member of your team who, all else being equal, has the fewest connections with the personnel of the department for which you are negotiating.
    Managers also might consider the implications of these studies. As tempting as it would be to promote, for example, one of the team’s long-standing high performers in your sales department, the connection that individual likely has with the previous sales manager might serve to extend the life of decisions and strategies that you would actually prefer to eliminate. On the other hand, if you want the approaches and strategies employed by a previous manager to continue, then appointing that individual might be exactly the right thing to do.
    And of course when it comes to your own negotiations and decisions, an awareness of the small but powerful influences that can sway your actions and decisions is crucial. Acting in accord with this insight might be enough for you to avoid a Poseidon -like adventure yourself that leads to the sinking of your business. For instance, research led by Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University demonstrated that, if you