A Trojan Horse

I love walking. I don't mind forgoing my morning cup of coffee, but not the half-hour of brisk walking. So when the student organiser of INSIGHT 2012 (IIMA’s marketing research fair that attracts several thousand Ahmedabadis) asked me if I could join a walkathon he was organising as part of the fair, I readily said yes. Because this year’s INSIGHT was on the last Sunday of September, it coincided with the World Heart Day, he added, and therefore the objective of the walkathon was to spread awareness about keeping the heart healthy. Excellent, I thought.

The walkathon was at an inconvenient time for me. However, I put aside other things and arrived at the venue five minutes ahead of the announced start. There was a small crowd, but hardly any IIMA students, faculty, or support staff among them although the walkathon would start from the campus.

Everyone was wearing a T-shirt that prominently displayed a local hospital’s name and logo along with IIMA’s. I was offered one. I declined. I didn't want to be a mobile hoarding for a hospital. Then placards were handed out. They also carried the hospital’s name and logo prominently along with a health tip. By now I realised that instead of a brisk walk with an element of competition thrown in, what I was going to take part in was a slow procession through a city road to raise public awareness about that particular hospital rather than about the heart and the need to keep it healthy. The strangers in promotional T-shirts appeared to be from that hospital.

About ten minutes after the walkathon was supposed to start, the chief cardiac surgeon of that hospital spoke. It was followed by a speech by a municipal corporator. At that point I excused myself and came away.

Walking home, I asked myself whether I was being too unrealistic. The hospital must have given the INSIGHT organisers several hundred thousand rupees to be the main sponsor and to have an opportunity to be seen by the thousands of Ahmedabadis who would throng the venue later in the day. The walkathon was a small part of that promotional effort. Why not? He who pays the piper calls the tune. Sponsors give money in exchange for publicity. That's what all sponsors do, right? Even the so-called Corporate Social Responsibility activities have the same objective.

I don't have any objection to organisations buying publicity. If, however, I didn't want to be a pawn in that game, why did I readily agree to take part in the walkathon? The simple answer is that the student organiser had framed the walking event as part of INSIGHT and intended to raise awareness about World Heart Day. The student didn't lie. But he gave me a partial story, the part that was attractive. It was a Trojan Horse. I can't blame the student because I should have asked questions before accepting the invitation. I realised that such framing of issues often leads us to commitments that we cannot easily get out of.

Photo Credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Shakespeare was wrong

Can the universally admired and respected Shakespeare be wrong? The Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon was a shrewd observer of human strengths and weaknesses.  Through his myriad characters, he has given the world more pearls of wisdom than any philosopher.  Where then has he gone wrong?

In his heart-wrenching tragedy of young, star-crossed lovers, Juliet asks Romeo, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” This appears to be so obviously right and so aptly phrased that it would be foolish to call its wisdom into question. But Shakespeare was wrong here for once. Dead wrong.

Of course the smell doesn't change just because you call a rose by a different name or leave it unnamed. But whether that flower smells sweet or not depends on what you call it. What's in a name? Everything. In fact, the name is the thing. We are so lazy that we happily take decisions based on names, not substance. Let me give you a fascinating example.

Rudy Kurniawan, 35, a Chinese Indonesian who has been living in the United States since 2001, was arrested by the FBI in the first week of March and indicted last week. His crime? He made millions of dollars by passing off cheap wine as rarest of rare vintage for more than six years. His victims? Not ignorant shoppers but some of the most learned wine experts, super rich wine drinkers, and highly respected auctioneers of rare wines. How did he fool the most cultivated of palates with cheap wines?

Please go to Mail Online  of May 15, 2012 or New York Magazine of May 13, 2012 for the full story of the fraud. While there are many factors that helped Kurniawan perpetrate the fraud in the highest rungs of the obscenely expensive vintage wines market (a 1945 DRC Romanee-Conti was sold last year for $124,000!) year after year, what is interesting is the role played by genuine bottles and well executed copies of old labels. About fifty years ago Marshall McLuhan declared, “The medium is the message.” Similarly, we can say, the bottle is the wine.

The bottle and the name shaped the experience of the experts and persuaded them to ignore any evidence of their own palates. The bottle and the label transformed cheap, newly made wines into rare old wines and generated the pleasure rare wines are supposed to give drinkers. There were occasional murmurs about the genuineness of Kurniawan’s supply of vintage wines, but he was never caught. What finally exposed him was a slip unrelated to the taste of his wines. At an international auction he had claimed that his consignment of the famous Clos St Denis was from 1959 and 1945.  The problem was that Domaine Ponsot, the maker of this wine, had started bottling it only in the 1980s.

The whole Kurniawan episode reminds me of a scene from late 1981. My four-year-old daughter would watch British sitcoms and laugh aloud along with the canned laughter although she didn’t understand the dialogue. When asked why she was laughing, she said ‘because they’re comedies.’

Rudy Kurniawan’s photo is from Los Angeles Times.

Don’t Bluff!

In the last post, “Cheap Viagra, summer internship,” I talked about the way many bright students fail miserably to persuade professors to hire them as summer interns. Let me follow it up with the text of an exchange I had with an IIT student. All names except mine have been masked. Apart from this, the text is reproduced without any editorial changes.

(1) Original email from the student

Subject: Application for Internship

Dear Mr. Monippally,
     I am writing to you to explore the possibility of summer internship in your esteemed university during May-July 200x.

     My name is Raghupati Mishra. I am a Second year undergraduate student in the Dual Degree Program (Btech + Mtech) in Mechanical Engineering Department(specialization in Thermal and Fluids engineering) at the Indian Institute of Technology XXX, India.

     Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you.

      I am very motivated to involve myself in Management field. I have  sufficient lab exposure--academic as well as optional as summer project--I have comppleted many managerial porjects related to marketing and management. I completed my project of data collection of NTSE students and convencing them to join [a coaching centre] for the preparation of IIT-jee for thier safe future under Mr. XXX. (Director of the coaching centre, Kota). I am also presetly working as a project manager and central co-ordinator for the conduction of zzz (a project under Mr. yyy,Director of Acme, Kota).

     I am also proficient in MS Office(Softwares) and Programming language C++, and can work in both Windows and Linux platforms. I am learning MATLAB to have some additional software knowledge.

     Kindly spare some time to consider my credentials and evaluate my chances of acquiring a summer trainee position under your able guidance. I have written a brief resume below for your appraisal. If any further information is required, I would be glad to furnish the same.

Thank you for reading.
Regards,

Raghupati Mishra
II year undergraduate,
Mechanical department,
IITX

                  CURRICULUM VITAE

[An impressive CV, copied in the body of the mail and attached as a Word file.]

(2)  My response to 1

Raghupati 

My advice: Don't bluff. 

Best wishes 

RN Saxena

(3) The student’s response to 2

Dear Monippally,

Actually i didn't got you while mentioning it as bluff. I am working since last two years at so much hard level, just to build up mine resume and if somebody calls it as bluff's, it really hurts me a lot.

First of all i will love to mention that i am making mine website(its under construction:- http://www.me.iitx.ac.in/~raghupati    please please please visit it before commenting some other words about me), their i would be uploading all the certificates which i received while working on these projects, i did since last 2 years as a proof.

Actually I am from such a family, that my father don't even had money  for my graduation. My father had taken loan form bank on mine studies, in short i knows what are my dreams and who i am right now. Case was this that before coming to IIT i had'nt touched computer before but then i started to exploring myself, and started devloping such qualities within myself. Now the situation is this that my hostel   council decided that i should start working as a comp. secy. of my hostel. because they thought i was quite much known about computer stuffs.

I am asking for a project in winter(dec.) not for summer(june and july) because i dont want to waste my 1 month like others use to do. My life is full of struggle. I am sorry to say you that if you don't want to give me a project then please dont give me that but please don't say such words that would effect someone feelings.

Last but not the least, i would be greatfull to yours if your will mention me that while reading which line u fealed that mine resume was bluff.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra, Mechanical department, IIT XXX

(4) My Response to 3

Raghupati

When I asked you not to bluff, I wasn't referring to your CV at all. I didn't read it. I didn't want to go on to the CV because when I came to the following claim in your mail, I realized you were bluffing:

"Having visited your personal homepage and gone through your research interests, I am really motivated and would consider myself fortunate if I get an opportunity to work under a distinguished scholar like you."

There was no sign at all in your mail of your having visited my personal homepage to check out my research interests. If at all you clicked on the link, you appear to have done it just to be able to say that you visited the home page.

I could have just deleted your mail. I decided to send you a one-liner in your own interest. There may be professors here who are working on areas that interest you and might offer you an internship. Don't spoil your chances of such a project by this kind of pseudo-customization.

Best wishes

MMM

(5) The student’s response 4

Dear Monippally,

It may be my fault that while mailing i decided to keep the cover letter to be same for everyone. So sorry for that, but i would appreciate that your reason was very logical.
Last but not the least, thanks for your best wishes.

Thanking you,
Raghupati Mishra,
Mechanical Department,
IIT XXX,

Image from http://www.istockphoto.com

Cheap Viagra, Summer Internship

This is the season of summer internship applications. In March-April, the inboxes of professors in top tier business schools in the country get flooded with e-mail from second year and third year students of engineering at IITs/NITs and other leading engineering institutes in the country.

The arrangement is good for both the parties. Many professors work on their research projects during the summer vacation when they are free from classroom teaching. They welcome the high-quality but inexpensive assistance the bright young men and women from the top engineering institutes provide. The students gain even more. Most of them are interested in doing an MBA after their engineering. A close association with a professor and an inside view of a top business school give them an edge when they compete for a place in these business schools.

But a large number of these smart engineering students never get a reply, not even an acknowledgement. What’s wrong? Instead of identifying the kind of professors they want to work with, customising their request to appeal to those individuals, and then e-mailing them individually, these students adopt the persuasion techniques of spammers who peddle cheap Viagra.

For spammers, a one percent response rate is more than enough because their e-mail goes to millions of people of all ages and colours all over the world. Secondly, their aim may not be to persuade you to buy cheap Viagra (or whatever) they claim to be selling but to get you to click on a dangerous link. Even if you don’t want the product or service they advertise, you may click on the link if they can arouse your curiosity. Their persuasion techniques are inappropriate for students interested in summer internship in an academic institution.

Here’s the body of an e-mail I received from an IIT student recently. It’s reproduced without any change except for dropping the names.

Respected Sir,

            I, [First name Second name], am second year undergraduate student at Indian Institute of Technology [Place name]. I am currently pursuing my B.Tech Degree in Mining Engineering. I have perused through your web page and found your field of working to be coinciding with the field of interest of mine and find it very interesting.

I appeal to you, to consider me for a research internship under you between first week of May to 30th June. I enclose herewith, my Curriculum Vitae. I firmly believe that your guidance would surely add to my excellence.

 Thanking You,

Yours Sincerely,

I am certain that this bright young man has not visited my website and has no idea what research I do. If he had, he would have referred to something that I am working on. While not wasting his time visiting any professor’s website he thinks he can persuade some of them to respond by making a general statement that is true of any professor who has a website and who does some research. They are violating the first principal of persuasion: know your target and frame your proposal to meet their expectations. If they get a positive response from a professor, it only means that the professor doesn’t care who gets to work as a summer intern for him.

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

God’s own Ponzi

If gods can cure your diseases, give you babies, and help you pass exams, why can’t they help you make money? This is the question Ashok Jadeja, a homeopathic doctor and a member of the Sansi community in Gujarat asked.

Once he got a clear answer, he decided to try it out. And what an incredible success it was! As a humble channel of this awesome supernatural power, he is reputed to have made about ten billion (yes, billion) rupees in a matter of six months when he was arrested in June 2009.

He dressed himself as a godman and sat outside Sansi community’s Vahanvati Shikotar Matadi Temple in Ahmedabad.  After a few days he let the devotees know that he had been blessed by Matadi who instructed him to work for the benefit of the members of the community through tripling their money. If they deposited money with him, Matadi would triple it by evening.

No one believed him. But then some women decided to try it out. They offered small amounts such as Rs 100 in the morning. When they returned in the evening, they couldn’t believe their eyes. The godman pulled out from Matadi’s box three times the amount they had offered in the morning.

Soon the news of Matadi’s running miracle spread throughout the community.  Now not just a few women devotees but men of all descriptions including lawyers and doctors approached him with cash offerings. Jadeja, who had by now been rechristened Ashok Maadi, gradually raised Matadi’s ‘processing’ time from eight hours to twenty-four hours, two days, three weeks, and finally a month. He and his associates encouraged the devotees to re-offer the money and triple it again while the going was good instead of taking back and spending it. This made sense. As a result, very little money that was offered once went back to the ‘devotees.’ Jadeja invested most of the money in gold and real estate in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, CDs on the wonderful boon given by Matadi to her chosen servant were developed and circulated widely. Within weeks news spread to neighbouring states. Apparently Matadi decided to help not only members of the Sansi community but also any devotees who approached her through her humble servant, Ashok Matadi.  Members of his family and a few members of the community helped him accept money by manning the crowded cash counters.

What we find here is a lethal combination of god and mammon.  Both attract deep-seated devotion that shuts out reasoning almost completely.

We have plenty to learn from Jadeja’s way of working. He started out with small confidence building measures to get people to believe his impossible promises. He involved nearly all members of his extended family and many members of his community in his scheme and shared his booty generously with them. Thus they all spoke in one voice about the magical power of Matadi so that the illusion could be maintained. Jadeja also exploited the persuasive power of example. When you find that your neighbour has got something wonderful, you don’t want to miss out. You brush aside any questions your mind might raise.

If this is the way people are persuaded to do even silly things, why is it that in the corporate world we attach so much importance to logic and reasoning?

Photo credits: www.columbia.edu (Vahanvati Shikotar Mata) & www.indianexpress.com (Ashok Jadeja)

If I were Urmila...

This post is based on last week’s Sweet vine, bitter berries.

What would I do if I were Urmila? I asked myself this question several times. Every time I came up with the same answer. I would do exactly as she did until the doctor said, “Now you’re in my hands.”

We know nothing about the background of either the doctor or of Urmila other than the bare facts in the story. What is obvious is that she wasn’t looking out for any sexual adventure. If she was, the doctor wouldn’t be drugging her and making her do things she wouldn’t when conscious.

As one of the readers says, this is a story of deception. But deception is the finest form of persuasion. The problem is with the objectives. The techniques are the same. It’s worth identifying them so that we can adopt them for ethically acceptable objectives.

I see two faces of the doctor. He is a great persuader until Urmila takes the juice at his accomplice’s place. From that moment on he is a beastly criminal. He uses coercion including blackmailing, not persuasion or seduction, to make Urmila do his bidding. It is despicable to shoot a deer in a cage. And I hope the law catches up with him in spite of his obvious influence in high places including the judiciary.

What we will examine is why Urmila so readily accepted his offers and suggestions. Why was he so persuasive? The simple answer is that he earned her complete trust. As Aristotle says, of all the persuasion factors, the persuader’s credibility is the most important one. This is because once we trust someone, they can persuade us to do virtually anything. Our conscious mind, which is rational and critical, happily steps back and relaxes once it is reassured by trust.

Life would be terrible if we suspected that everyone around us was out to cheat us or take advantage of us. We want to trust people around us because that is when we feel at home. 

What are the factors that helped the doctor get Urmila’s complete trust? He was a prominent doctor working for the Chief Justice.  He belonged to her cast and village. But more than anything else, he was not in a hurry in a way that would alert her antennae. He met her occasionally, and offered her a ride home occasionally. It is almost as if he was not going out of his way but just being nice to a person from his circle. I assume that he avoided any kind of sexual innuendos when he talked to her.

On its own, none of these factors would create total trust. But when they came together they were deadly. If I were Urmila I wouldn’t sense any danger whatsoever because he built up his credibility bit by bit over a few weeks.

What do we learn from this? We are often not persuasive because we don’t build up our credibility. We don’t do enough to earn the trust of people around us, especially subordinates, through our actions over time. We delude ourselves into thinking that we are credible and rely too heavily on the power of the position we hold.

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Sweet vine, bitter berries

Today let me retell a true story that Mallika Sarabhai brought to our notice last Sunday (“Where can this woman be safe?” DNA Ahmedabad edition, October 30, 2011, page 4).

Urmila (not her real name), a married woman with a young  son, was working in the HR department a prestigious teaching hospital in Ahmedabad. She was happy with her work. Everything was going well for her.

At work she bumped into a doctor who worked for the Chief Justice of Gujarat. He was not only from her caste but also from her village. The occasional chat with him gave her joy in the otherwise sombre atmosphere of the hospital. Soon the doctor friend would often come around at the end of the work day and offer her a ride home. She had no hesitation in accepting this favour. They could chat on the drive home. Once in a while they would stop on the way for an ice cream. This was beautiful. Urmila was grateful for his warmth and selfless friendship.

One evening the doctor offered a ride as usual, but asked her whether she would mind if he stopped at a friend’s place for a few minutes to drop off something. Of course she didn’t mind. The doctor’s friend, a man, opened the door and invited them in. He gave her a glass of juice and asked her to make herself comfortable in the sitting room while the two men went in to another room for a discussion.

Urmila doesn’t recall anything that happened in that house after that. By the time she was dropped off outside her house a few hours later, she had just woken up from a deep sleep. She found it strange but said nothing about it to anyone.

The following day the doctor friend met her at work as usual and said that he had a surprise for her. She was eager to know what it was. He whipped out his cellphone and showed her a picture. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She looked again. The picture showed her performing oral sex on him. “Now you are in my hands,” gloated the doctor.

Urmila felt sick, violated, frightened. Somehow she got home. She stayed in bed for several days. Her husband and son were puzzled but had no clue.

The doctor friend called Urmila one morning and asked her to get back to the hospital and to ‘service’ a friend of his. She obliged.  She felt she had no choice. This went on for a few months. Then she quit the job.

Finally she picked up enough courage to bring together her family and close friends. She told them what happened. They were horrified but sympathetic. They decided to approach the police and to lodge a formal complaint.

You can read the rest of the story – the denial of justice – in Mallika Sarbahai’s column. I would like to focus on how deftly the doctor used persuasion techniques for his admittedly evil plans.

Readers, would you like to write in your comments and analysis? I’ll give my views in next week’s post.

Photo credit: http://www.istockphoto.com/

Mullah & Diwali

Mullah Nasruddin found a gold ring lying on the road. He picked it up and put it on. It was perfect. He liked it and wanted to keep it. He furtively looked around to see if anyone had noticed him picking it up. Fortunately, no one had.

But there was a hurdle.  Someone had lost that ring. According to the laws of the land, if you picked up something like that, you should go to the market square and loudly shout three times that you found it. If no one came forward to claim it, you would be the new owner. 

Nasruddin didn’t want to break the law, but he desperately wanted to keep the ring. He was also pretty sure that if he declared his discovery in public, someone would claim the gold ring’s ownership.

His fertile mind worked hard on this problem and came out with a brilliant solution. He went to the market square well past midnight and shouted three times, “I found this gold ring on market street.” 

By the time people sleeping at shopfronts at the square woke up hearing his shouts, the job was done. But they rushed to him and asked him what he had said. He told them, “The law requires me to shout three times that I’ve found something; but it doesn’t oblige me to repeat it a fourth time.” He went away satisfied that now he was the legal owner of sparkling gold ring. 

I was reminded of this story when an acquaintance of mine told me the other day that this year he had a guilt-free Diwali. A diabetic, he said he could gorge himself on sweets because he found a shop that made a variety of delicious sugar-free sweets. I didn’t want to spoil his glorious mood by asking him questions about the hideous amounts of fat, cholesterol, salt, artificial colours, and chemical taste enhancers that he would be letting in along with the so-called sugar-free sweets.

How easy it is for us to persuade ourselves when we want to do something desperately and we know we shouldn’t! We frame the issue in a way that we can avoid looking at its ugly side. We may be stark naked, but if we manage to get half a fig leaf and hold it strategically, we convince ourselves that our modesty is fully protected.

Happy, guilt-free Diwali!

We, the Pharm Animals

This week let me share with you my short article that appeared in Economic Times Corporate Dossier of July 8, 2011 under the title We, the Pharm Animals 

Most of us do our  best to stay clear of two places: the court and the jail.

The court is where we’re supposed to get justice. But the brand of justice it dispenses is tied to evidence.  Because wily lawyers can emasculate evidence in devious ways, the guilty often walk out with a DGP Rathoresque smirk and, at least occasionally, innocents get gavelled on the head.

As penetrating legal jargon is harder than entering Fort Knox, we are at the mercy of lawyers if we are unfortunate enough to have to deal with the law court either as a plaintiff or as a defendant.  In legal battles, which enter a cycle of rebirths at higher and higher levels sucking in more and more money, the lawyers are invariably the winners. Our savings suffer all the collateral damage. Naturally we want to avoid the court.

The trouble with jails is that they give us a forced holiday but won’t let us enjoy it in peace even if we have a discounted 2G licence in our pocket. Unless we belong to the super-privileged category called political prisoners, the jail brings us nothing but bugs and bad company. Not surprisingly, we shun the jail also with all our might and moolah.

But there is a rather dangerous place we sleepwalk into: the hospital. We are like farm bullocks that walk to the yoke raised by their master and allow themselves to be tied to it as if it were the most natural thing on earth to do.

“Infections acquired in health care settings are,” says a 2002 WHO report, “among the major causes of death and increased morbidity among hospitalized patients.” Yet, we rush into those very places even when we don’t need to or we have better options.  We now take it for granted, for example, that hospital is the ideal place for a natural biological process like childbirth. (Soon we may be persuaded to go there for conception too!)

Are we being conned into such blind faith in hospitals by smart ‘pharmers’ – medical professionals who have their services to sell and pharmaceutical companies that have their products to sell?

What are the compelling arguments in favour of hospital births? There is just one: if there is a complication, a well-equipped hospital with a team of doctors can deal with it far better than a midwife at home.

Of course. There is no need to debate it. The life of both the mother and the baby is precious. So we must leave them in the hands of professionals in a good hospital if we anticipate any complication. But why take a pregnant woman to that dangerous place if she is healthy, the pregnancy has been normal, and a natural birth is expected?

The pharma community has persuaded us to do precisely that by clever framing. They ask: “Do you want to take a risk with the life of the mother or of the baby or both?” When that question is so framed, none of us have the guts to say, ‘I do’ because the ‘risk to life’ does not appear to be a distant possibility but an immediate threat. So it unnerves us unlike the risk of fatal cancer from smoking or cardiac arrest from gorging on junk food. We scream, “No, no! We don’t want to take any risk. Let’s take her to hospital.”

Once a perfectly healthy pregnant woman is admitted to hospital, she is treated like a patient and monitored closely. She and her folks are made to look at the natural process of giving birth (which millions of mammals go through successfully every day without any monitoring or assistance whatsoever at whatever place they consider home) as a tension-filled, high-risk drama rivalling the capture of Osama bin Laden. The fear that anything can go wrong any moment makes the process tricky because no one, especially the woman, can relax.

To prevent anything from getting out of hand and possibly to justify expensive hospitalisation, most obstetricians strike without giving the natural process a chance to succeed. In an article on this topic in The Economist (‘Is there no place like home?’ March 31, 2011), the writer says, “Hospital births are more likely to end in Caesarean sections, and to involve episiotomies (cutting the perineum) and epidurals (which increase the odds that the labour will require forceps, which can tear the perineum).” Not at all surprising. Once you involve a professional, she has to demonstrate that you’re lucky she was around.

What if we frame the question differently? How risky is it for a healthy woman expecting a healthy baby to give birth at home with the help of a trained midwife? There is research data, but, as The Economist article points out, home-birthers and hospital-birthers gather and interpret data differently. Each group comes out with data that supports its position. Obviously, the better funded hospital-birthers with the trump card of horrible but unspecified risks to mother and baby, have been winning.

Healthy babies will continue to be born in homes of the poor and those who are far from hospitals, but we, the pharm animals, will troop into hospitals firmly believing that nothing could be safer or more natural. Together the medical professionals and the pharmaceutical companies seem to have done a fine job of mass persuasion.

Hats off …to con artists!

I must admit it.  I adore swindlers. I wish I had a fraction of their ingenuity and finesse.

They know what bait to use to catch what fish. We may swagger around pitying the victims of fraud we read about day in and day out. We may reassure ourselves that we are not like them. We are too smart to be taken for a ride. We can see through any fraud. All I can say is that whatever pride we feel in our ability to detect fraud is most probably false pride. It is just that a really good con artist hasn’t found it worthwhile to pit their wits against ours.

I’ve already done a couple of posts on deceptive persuasion. The immediate provocation for self-flogging is an interesting post, A Speaker scam, that I read earlier today. It is by Nick Morgan, a blogger I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in improving their communication.

The swindlers’ modus operandi is beautiful. They don’t fill your inbox with inane offers and promises. They target people who speak well and would be delighted to get an invitation to speak at a prestigious University or at a big religious conference in a foreign country. Not a Third World country, certainly not Nigeria, but UK. They don’t ask you to pay anything up front. Once you accept the invitation, they say they will send you air tickets, provide you hospitality in the UK, and pay you an attractive fee for the privilege of listening to you. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain including an international feather in your cap. At least that is what you think until very late in the game.

Let me not spoil the fun by giving you a summary of Nick Morgan’s post. Read the original; it’s short. Do go on to the comments section. You will find there several readers sharing their experience of receiving such invitations. The comments are, naturally, from those who detected the scam at some point and pulled back. They talk about the kind of things that aroused their suspicion. But I will not be surprised if there are hundreds of publicity-craving professional speakers worldwide who have been so highly honoured and so deeply conned.

Have you had any such experience? How did you detect the attempted con job?

The House that Sandweip Built (2)

Here is what I think of the persuasion strategy Sandweip adopted in The House That Sandweip Built (1).

There are two reasons why the hospital’s trustees were persuaded to part with Rs 4 million for six months’ stock of a single drug. First, they had nothing to lose and plenty to gain. At a discounted price they were getting high-quality imported antibiotics that wouldn’t expire for four years. They paid by several post-dated cheques. They would pay the pharmaceutical company only after they received money from the patients.

Second, they felt good that they were helping a supplier in trouble. To get such a feeling, we may even sacrifice a few things. We may, for example, give up a bus seat or a place in a queue to an older or differently-abled person or a woman with a baby because the mild sacrifice makes us feel good. The hospital trustees could feel good without sacrificing anything at all. In fact, they would earn the pharmaceutical company’s gratitude.

There is a variant of this – our eagerness to benefit from others’ misery. Merchants at times exploit it by framing their discounted offering as “export surplus,” “closing down sale,” etc.

Thus it is not surprising that the trustees bought Sandweip’s proposal.

The house that Sandweip built is beautiful indeed, but I think it is built on sand. There is a good chance that it would collapse at the first sign of a small quake. That, as Sandweip suggests, the trustees never found out the real reason for the offer he made is not is irrelevant. Let me explain.

First, an alert trustee might have smelled a rat and questioned Sandweip closely to find out why such a generous offer was being made. It is a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth. He might, for example, have wondered why the pharmaceutical company didn’t hold onto the consignment and release it as usual at the standard price. After all, the drug had another four years’ life. If Sandweip was ready to accept post-dated cheques in spite of offering a very good discount, it was obvious that this arrangement would not help the company’s cash flow. 

What Sandweip did, when he was asked to meet the trustees, was to prevent uncomfortable questions by talking on and on. It obviously worked, but it need not have, especially when he had to persuade several people at one go. If uncomfortable questions had come from any of the trustees, he might have found himself telling even more elaborate stories to support the initial one.

Second, actions provoke reactions. Sandweip probably expected his rivals to be frustrated when several big hospitals refused to take their much cheaper alternatives to Xolzyn, and give up. But some sales managers might probe why the big hospitals behaved strangely. Once they got to know the real story behind the dumping of six months’ supply of Xolzyn, they might want to share it with the trustees. And when they found that they had been taken for a ride, the trustees might decide not to have any further dealings with Sandweip or his company.

The rival sales manager might be able to show them that the hospital actually lost money by stocking up on expensive Xolzyn for six months or more when a much cheaper and equally effective substitute was available. Even if there was no loss of money, the fact that the entire sales pitch was built on a lie might make the trustees feel resentful. They might consider Sandweip’s ploy unethical. His superb success was really a short-term one. He might have won the battle but could have lost the war.

Was it possible to adopt the Stop & Block strategy and sell the trustees a large consignment of Xolzyn without telling them a lie? Any suggestions?

A stroke of luck (2)

 Charu Datta behaved like the way an animal walks into a trap in search of the easy food waiting there.

They expected him to accept the invitation to work with the Prince. He did it readily. They expected him to become curious and watch secretly what the Prince was doing to the maiden behind closed doors. Their entire plan hinged on it. They expected him to become convinced that it was safe to bring his own wife. They expected him to want to make a fast buck without any risk by passing his young bride off as a virgin. He did.

Why did he fall for such a trick? Was he a big fool? 

Not really.We cannot spot a clever setup (here, the unsolicited offer of employment at the palace and the Prince’s special Gauri pooja with maidens being worshipped) however smart we are.  The simple reason is that there is nothing odd or unusual about it to arouse any kind of suspicion. A clever setup is like a smart spy who never looks like a spy.

Does it mean that there is no way we can prevent being deceived? Does it mean that we should look at everything and everyone with suspicion?

Certainly not. While we may not be able to spot a setup, there are things we can do to avoid walking into the trap.

We generally fall victims to deceptive persuasion for four reasons. I deal with them in chapter 10, The Resistant Persuadee, The Persuasive Manager. Let me give you a summary.

1.  We tend to take many decisions at a sub-rational level, which is driven largely by instincts.

2.  We blindly rely on certain rules of thumb to deal with the complexities of life.

3.  We are often too lazy to scrutinise apparently logical but false reasoning that our persuaders use.

4. We suffer from the Goliath Complex: we think we are too smart to be cheated.

When good things happen to us we fold our critical antennae and go along without asking any questions. We don’t want the soothing music to stop. Then instincts such as greed take over. Our fraudulent persuaders depend on this sequence to trap us.

It is possible to say that Charu Datta should have asked himself why, without any move whatsoever on his part, he was invited by the Prince and given a prestigious assignment. But this is wisdom in hindsight. Things like this can happen. Any of us could be the lucky beneficiary of someone’s generosity. We can’t blame Charu Datta for accepting the assignment.

Even his curiosity is understandable. But what undid him was letting greed guide his actions.  We see many examples around us. The Ahmedabad edition of the newspaper DNA has, for example, been reporting that a few local companies are promising 120% annual returns on investment. People are handing over their hard earned cash to agents of these companies. It is obvious that such high returns are either impossible or illegal or both. It is greed combined with a sense of invulnerability that persuaders many investors to part with their money.

There is a simple rule of thumb that we can follow if we don’t want to be victims of fraudulent persuasion: If something is too good to be true, don’t grab it; be extra critical. Consult others before you go ahead.

A stroke of luck (1)

*Charu Datta, son of a wealthy merchant in the city of Virapura, couldn’t believe his luck. He pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Prince Tungabala had sent for him one fine day and, after a short interview, offered to make him a personal assistant. Charu Datta eagerly grabbed the rare opportunity. This was a sure path to wealth and influence. He must have done something really virtuous in his previous birth to get a gift like this without even trying, thought the young man.

Soon it was Navratri. The prince decided to perform Gauri pooja (in which a young virgin is worshipped as if she were Goddess Gauri) and asked Charu Datta to bring a different virgin every night of Navratri. He readily obliged. He guessed what the prince would do to the virgin behind the closed doors of the royal bedroom. So overcome by curiosity he peeped through the keyhole during the first night and the following nights. To his utter surprise, the prince did not touch the woman. He sat away from her, performed the pooja with his eyes closed, offered her expensive gifts and ornaments, and sent her away. The same story went on for eight nights. The only difference was that each night the gifts were more dazzling than the previous night’s.

Now a brilliant idea struck Charu Datta: "For the last night’s pooja, why don’t I present my own young bride, Lavanyavati? It’s an absolutely safe and easy way to get a lot of expensive gifts and ornaments. She is so young and pretty, the prince will never know that she is not a virgin."

That night also Charu Datta peeped through the keyhole. To his horror, this time the prince behaved differently. He slowly disrobed Lavanyavati and made love to her. Charu Datta felt trapped. He couldn’t do anything to stop it; he couldn’t dare tell the prince that this woman was his wife and not a virgin.

Let me now tell you the other side of the story, which poor Charu Datta had no idea about. While touring the city a few weeks before this event, Prince Tungabala had come across the exceedingly beautiful Lavanyavati and instantly overcome by desire for her. She also felt drawn to the handsome prince. But she checked herself because she was married. The Prince sent a woman to persuade Lavanyavati to come to him. But Lavanyavati refused; she said that she would not betray her husband and that she would go to the prince only if her husband sent her. The Prince didn’t know how to overcome such strong resistance and comply with such an impossible condition. That is when the messenger woman hatched this plan.

*Developed from a story in Book I of Hitopadesa. Translated by A.N.D. Haksar. Penguin Books.

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There are plenty of timeless lessons in persuasion in this story, which is at least a thousand years old.  Particularly noteworthy are the role of framing and the role of unbridled instincts in deceptive persuasion. It also shows us how tough it is for us to detect a setup that nearly always precedes deceptive persuasion. I will give you my analysis in the next post in a few days. In the meanwhile I invite you to write in your analysis of persuasion in this story.

Bull!

Recently we read in the papers about a young Delhi woman who poisoned her jeweller husband and two kids to elope with a man she had ‘met’ on Facebook and had been communicating with for a few weeks. 


The man had told her that he was a non-resident Indian based in London, interested in marrying an Indian woman, and taking her back to London with him. He found her perfect. They decided to get married. He asked her to leave her family and bring some cash or jewellery; she gladly took along jewellery worth about half a million Rupees. They checked into a hotel and had some refreshments in the room. The following morning, when the woman woke up, she realised that her lover had taken all her jewellery and left without any trace. He had laced her drink with some sedative.

We may be tempted to tut-tut and wonder how gullible folks can be. How could this woman trust a stranger and take his claims seriously? Shouldn’t she have checked his credentials? After all, it was a major, life-changing decision that she was taking.

We may consider her foolish and gullible. The fact is, we are little different from her. We are susceptible to deceptive persuasion if the conditions are ripe. Let us look at the conditions under which this young woman acted the way she did.

We don’t have any information about her personal life and relationship with her husband. We can only speculate. It is very likely that she was not happy with her marriage. She was hoping for an exit. Perhaps she had dreams of living abroad especially in a western country. She wanted someone to come along and deliver her from her marriage. When the Facebook friend happened, her mind was fully ready to buy any bull from him. 

The man must have been suave, full of love and concern. He must have shared with her his dreams of an exciting, love-filled life together with her. He presented to her the picture of a caring man who appreciated her, unlike her husband who took her for granted. She desperately wanted to believe him and was afraid that she would lose him if she dillydallied. Under such circumstances, it is not at all surprising that her critical faculties were switched off. It is like your immuno-responses being suppressed by cortisone.

However knowledgeable and critical we are, we also succumb to deceptive persuasion if we are approached with a proposal that is along the lines that we believe in and are dreaming of. The belief that we are smart and that we cannot be taken for a ride itself dulls our critical faculties. In fact, fraudulent persuaders often play on our sense of invulnerability to strike us. 

Take any financial fraud that lures savvy investors. The victims consider themselves smart, capable of smelling an extraordinary opportunity before others spot it. They skip due diligence because their greed doesn’t let them share such information widely or seek others’ opinion. They are worried they would lose the edge. Just like the woman who didn’t ask her Facebook lover any hard questions lest she would lose him.

Have you had any experience of being taken for a ride? Why not share it with us? I have had several. I’ll share one with you in a few days. Fortunately the loss was minimal. And the learning phenomenal.