Second in a series of posts on how to get more good evidence into the hands of people who can benefit from it (post #1 is here). The starting point for this was the idea that The medium is the message.
When someone makes a decision we don't like, it's easy to accuse them of not following the evidence, saying they're managing based on old habits, new trends, or a cult of personality. But we know it's not always that simple. In some cases, maybe we - gasp! - failed to present the evidence persuasively. So how can we improve the odds that we will influence our intended audience?
Persuasion's the thing. Every time I've caught myself thinking that the facts (or numbers) speak for themselves, I've been proven wrong... they don't. I've learned the hard way that when I have evidence I believe in, it's up to me to give it a persuasive voice (by persuasive, I mean "capable of convincing" -- it's often defined as "intended or having the power to induce action or belief"). Why should I make a tremendous effort to uncover evidence and communicate it to someone else if I don't want to persuade them -- either for their benefit (such as good health), or for mine (monetary gain or recognition, perhaps)? This means that both the medium and the message must be persuasive.
Part 1: The message. To support evidence-based management, we typically work with complex information that can easily push people over the MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) threshold. (I often describe this stuff as ugly information: very specialized and potentially very influential, but also very difficult to communicate.) To be more persuasive and reach a wider audience, it usually needs some polish -- including a well-crafted, easy-to-grasp executive summary or abstract.
Part 2: The medium. Once you've developed your message, try thinking of your medium as a persuasive technology: A technology (such as a web page or simulation game) that's specifically designed to motivate / persuade / convince people by appealing to their reason or understanding. This can improve the uptake of the message you're sending. Researchers are examining which persuasive tools are most effective, and annual conferences on persuasive technology have been held in recent years.
It's up to you! We've all been there: Diligently putting together solid evidence we believe will be valuable to our intended audience -- only to discover that they don't appreciate it or act on it. It's tempting to react with condescension ("They just don't get it... probably can't follow it."), apathy ("So I'm not changing the world. At least I got my research published."), or frustration (inevitably decaying into resentment, sadness, and bitterness). Here's another idea: If you really believe the information can make a meaningful contribution to evidence-based management, then do your part to make the evidence easier to find and harder to ignore.
Next up: Formatting evidence so it's more recognizable by search engines and web browsers. We could use state-of-the-art web technologies to communicate this stuff more effectively. In a future post I'll explore how we might do that using things like markup languages and microformats.
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