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

cartoons for the Kansas City Star newspaper because, according to the paper’s editor, “He wasn’t creative enough.”
    In 2012, British biologist Sir John Gurdon’s long and distinguished contribution to physiology and medicine was recognized with a Nobel Prize despite an Eton schoolmaster writing on his report card, “I believe Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; based on his present showing this is quite ridiculous.”
    And according to Hollywood folklore, a studio manager at RKO Pictures was reputed to have written off Fred Astaire in an early screen test, saying, “[He] can’t act. Can’t sing. Balding. Can dance a little.”
    Happily, these early setbacks weren’t enough to deter each from the goals they had set for themselves. Each went on to achieve amazing things. But sometimes people do get diverted and disengage from their goals—not the big, once-in-a-lifetime, dream factory kind of goals that future Nobel Prize winners and Hollywood icons will aspire to achieve, but smaller yet still important everyday goals, like saving a bit more money, losing some weight, paying off a credit card debt, or reaching this month’s sales quota.
    People often need to reengage with a previous goal they have set themselves. Similarly, managers, team supervisors, teachers, and even parents will sometimes need to reconnect and engage their staffs, students, and kids with an earlier objective, too. Traditionally when we set new goals either for ourselves or for others, the received wisdom has been to be very specific about what needs to be achieved. For example, lose two pounds a week, run six miles in 60 minutes, or save $100 every month for next year’s vacation fund. But is this common wisdom really true when we’re persuading ourselves or others to reengage with a goal?
    Marketing professors Maura Scott and Stephen Nowlis thought that even though it makes intuitive sense for people to create a single, specific number goal for a new objective or endeavor, this may not necessarily be the case when it comes to reengaging with one’s previous goals. Instead, they believed that people would be much more likely to reengage with prior goals if—rather than setting a single, specific number goal (e.g., lose 3 pounds a week)—they set a goal with a high-low range that averaged the same (e.g., lose 2–4 pounds a week).
    To test their ideas the researchers set up a series of studies including one that took place in a weight loss club. Members who agreed to participate in the ten-week program first established their weight loss goals for the period and were then assigned to one of two weight loss groups—either a single-number goal group or a high-low range goal group. For example, members wishing to lose 2 pounds in the first week would be given the goal to “lose 2 pounds this week” if they were assigned to the single-number group or given the goal to “lose 1–3 pounds this week” if they were assigned to the high-low range number group.
    At the beginning of each week participants would weigh in, establish their weight loss goal for the following week, and then take part in a group session in which they learned about healthy lifestyle practices. At the end of the ten-week period, the researchers measured both the dieters’ performance—in terms of the amount of weight they lost—and willingness to reengage in another ten-week program. Although there wasn’t much difference in terms of weight loss between the groups (during the first three weeks, those in the high-low range group lost an average 2.67 pounds compared to 2.2 pounds in the single-number goal group), the high-low range goal had a huge effect on persuading dieters to reengage and enroll in a further ten-week program. Just over 50 percent of those assigned a single-number weight loss goal enrolled in a future weight loss program, but close to 80 percent of those assigned a high-low range weight loss goal enrolled in further programs, paying a