Save the Surprise

In 2012, the multi‐award‐winning film director Danny Boyle directed a performance unlike anything he'd directed before. As artistic director of the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games, he was responsible for a live show costing £27 million that would be performed in front of 80,000 spectators in the stadium and billions of TV viewers worldwide. To ensure things ran as smoothly as possible on the night, Boyle invited 60,000 Olympic volunteers, prize‐winners and other guests to a technical rehearsal, five days before the actual ceremony.

In order to maintain secrecy around the show's contents, Boyle spoke to the audience and asked them not to share photographs or details of the event on social media. Having told them they were the first people in the world to see the show, he asked for their help to “save the surprise” and the hashtag #SaveTheSurprise was displayed on screens in the stadium. Boyle crossed his fingers that nothing major would leak. It didn't. Rather than sharing details of the show, people shared their thoughts about it using the hashtag.

What Boyle had realised was the fact his audience would naturally want to talk about what they'd seen. By explaining why he needed them not to reveal details of the show and recognising that “save the surprise” would be more appealing than saying “keep the secret”, Boyle persuaded the audience to willingly do what he wanted them to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given he's a film director, Boyle had not only understood his audience, but he'd also ensured that they understood what he wanted.

U Is for Understood

The principles that underpinned #SaveTheSurprise are a perfect example of what “Understood”, the second element of HUMANS, is all about. Before we explore further, it is worth noting that “Understood” should be read as meaning “comprehend” as opposed to “liking” or “agreeing to”; those nuances are covered by “Acceptable”.

“Understood” is one of the more complex elements and explores three separate areas:

1. The first area is whether our employees understand what we want them to do. #SaveTheSurprise worked because the audience understood that they needed to not divulge details of the opening ceremony. If our employees don't comprehend what we are asking them to do, then there is a risk that they will either be incapable of complying, or only partially able to comply. In some cases, the need to understand is scalar – the more they understand, the more they are able to comply – while in others it is binary; you either understand and comply, or you do not. Of course, even if they don't comprehend, it is still theoretically possible in some cases, for them to be “unknowingly” or “accidentally” compliant; they don't understand what we are asking them to do, but they somehow manage to do it anyway.
2. The next area is whether our employees understand why we want them to do it. The #SaveTheSurprise audience understood the reason why they were being asked to do it and why that was important. If the rationale for the request hadn't been made clear to them, they might not have done. Explaining the “why” was necessary both to get the audience's buy‐in and for practical reasons. This is particularly important for rules with qualitative components. As we will explore in more detail in Part III of this book, there are certain rules that require our employees not only to understand what we are asking them to do, but also why, so that they can comply to a certain standard. Sometimes, as with #SaveTheSurprise, there is simply a baseline of knowledge required, On other occasions, there is more of a linear correlation; the greater the level of comprehension, the greater the ability to comply.
3. The final area is the question of whether our employees think that we understand what we are asking them to do. In some respects, it isn't a question that obviously belongs in this section, since it is more relevant to elements like “Acceptable” or “Normal” which explore how our employees feel about the “reasonableness” of what we are asking them to do. However, since it covers similar ground to the other questions we are asking in this chapter, I felt it was more appropriate to include it here. The idea behind it is that propensity to comply can in some instances be heavily influenced by the credibility of the person making the request. For the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, Danny Boyle made it very clear to the dress rehearsal audience that he recognised the scale of what he was asking them to do. Not just in the way that he explained it to them. By providing the #SaveTheSurprise hashtag, the organisers showed the audience that they understood that they would want to share their experience with friends on social media, and gave them a frame for doing it, without revealing the contents.

The Curse of Dunning and Kruger

One of the challenges with the concept of understanding is that the shadow of Dunning and Kruger hangs over it (see Chapter 6). After all, our would‐be heist hero McArthur Wheeler thought he understood how invisible ink worked, when clearly he did not! We've all seen examples of people knowing what they need to do, but failing to understand why. Just in case you haven't, there's an example of an embarrassing story of when it happened to me, in a couple of chapters' time!

We also need to be mindful of the curse of knowledge. If we need our employees to understand something, then we need to remember that what seems obvious to us might not to them. We know why we're implementing a particular rule; they might not. That doesn't mean that we need them to have our level of understanding; they just need to know enough for it to make sense to them.

It can be tempting to see the Dunning–Kruger Effect as an employee problem, and the curse of knowledge as our problem. However, it's worth remembering that we can also display Dunning–Krugeresque tendencies, by thinking we know more about life on the front line than we really do and therefore imposing requirements that don't make sense. Equally, employees can suffer from the curse of knowledge; not understanding that we don't have the experience that they have.

Before you worry that we're entering a cognitive circle of hell, there's a simple solution here. Since we're the ones who are seeking to impose rules on our employees, it's incumbent on us to solve this problem. In simple terms, that means spending time thinking about things from our employees' perspective and recognising that we, like them, can make flawed judgements.

Key Questions

To explore whether our employees are likely to find something more or less understandable, we need to consider the following questions; as ever, all are worded from the perspective of the employee:

1. Do I understand what they are asking me to do?
2. Do I understand why they are asking me to do it?
3. Do they understand what they are asking me to do?