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Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits. In fact, crises are such valuable opportunities that a wise leader often prolongs a sense of emergency on purpose. A company with dysfunctional habits can’t turn around simply because a leader orders it. Rather, wise executives seek out moments of crisis— or create the perception of crisis— and cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is finally ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day.
“This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”
if we start our shopping sprees by loading up on healthy stuff, we’re much more likely to buy Doritos,
Oreos, and frozen pizza when we encounter them later on. The burst of subconscious virtuousness that comes from first buying butternut squash makes it easier to later put a pint of ice cream in the cart.
There are thousands of hours of videotapes showing shoppers turning right once they clear the front doors.) As a result of this tendency, retailers fill the right side of the stores with the most profitable products they’re hoping you’ll buy right off the bat.
“Consumers sometimes act like creatures of habit, automatically repeating past behavior with little regard to current goals,” two psychologists at the University of Southern California wrote in 2009.
A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.
If you use your Target credit card to purchase a box of Popsicles once a week, usually around 6:30 P.M. on a weekday, and megasized trash bags every July and October, Target’s statisticians and computer
programs will determine that you have kids at home, tend to stop for groceries on your way back from work, and have a lawn that needs mowing in the summer and trees that drop leaves in the fall.