"What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes."

The last blog was about marshmallows.  This one is about radishes.  I like to eat radishes on my salad.  I will even pick up a radish and eat it whole from time to time.  I remember having a vegetable garden one summer when I was a young boy, and radishes were one of the easiest things to grow.  But given the choice between eating a radish or a marshmallow?  I would pick the marshmallow.  Given a choice between a plate of chocolate chip cookies or a plate of radishes?  Even easier - I would pick the chocolate chip cookies 99 times out of 100!

As it turns out, most college students would prefer to eat a plate of chocolate chip cookies rather than a plate of radishes too.  Which brings up another interesting psychology experiment.  The social psychologist, Roy Baumeister published an interesting study on will power in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1998.  The study was popularized further in Chip and Dan Heath's book, Switch.  Basically, college students were told to fast for at least 3 hours before coming to Baumeister's psychology laboratory.  The students were told that they would be participating in an experiment on taste perception.  Upon entering the laboratory, the students immediately detected the aroma of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.  Each student was told to sit at a table on which was placed two plates - a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a plate of radishes.  The laboratory staff then obtained informed consent and explained that the study was designed to test subjects' taste perception.  Each student was assigned to either the "cookie group" or the "radish group."  Students in the "cookie group" were told to eat at least 2-3 cookies but no radishes, while students in the "radish group" were told to eat at least 2-3 radishes but no cookies.  The laboratory staff then left the room and observed what happened through a one-way mirror.  After about 5 minutes, the laboratory staff re-entered the room and asked the student to complete a nearly impossible puzzle.  Students in the "cookie group" spent, on average, a total of 19 minutes on the puzzle before quitting.  Students in the "radish group", on the other hand, spent only 8 minutes on the puzzle before quitting.

What did Baumeister and colleagues conclude from this experiment?  The radish experiment, as well as the follow-up experiments which provided additional, confirmatory evidence, supported Baumeister's "ego depletion" hypothesis.  Essentially, we all have a finite amount of self-control or willpower that we can rely upon in any situation.  Once we use up that self-control, we are more susceptible to a loss of control or willpower in a later situation.  Here, subjects that were told to eat the radishes and refrain from eating the cookies were using their willpower to follow the laboratory staff's admonition NOT to eat the cookie (they could have easily done so - no one was stopping them, right?).  Most of the students did, in fact, refrain from eating the cookies.  However, the mere act of refraining from eating the cookie used up all of their willpower.  So when they were faced with a more difficult cognitive task, they simply gave up.  It really doesn't take a lot of willpower to refrain from eating radishes, especially when you are told to eat the cookies.  Therefore, the students in the "cookie  group" still had enough willpower to persist for a longer period of time on the impossible puzzle.

So, what are the implications of ego depletion for leaders?  Dan Heath explains in a video that accompanied the release of the book (Switch) that he co-authored with his brother, Chip.  The Heath brothers use the radish experiment to explain (partly) why change is so difficult for all of us.  To summarize, the Heaths believe that people resist change because they are exhausted - it all comes down to ego depletion.  They spend their finite amount of self-control on willpower on other things and then just don't have enough willpower leftover to stretch themselves in new ways and new directions to change.  We, as leaders, can help people embrace change by remembering that people are subject to ego depletion.  So, we should:

1.  Make sure that the "new way of doing things" is easier than the old way.  Make change easy.  Cookies are always better than radishes!

2.  Don't change too many things at once.  Too much change will exhaust everyone's "willpower" stores.  Keep things simple.

3.  Limit the number of choices.  If people have to think too hard about what to change or how to change, they will likely expend their limited stores of willpower.  Too many decisions will lead to "decision paralysis" and force people to go back to the more familiar (and often more comfortable) "old way of doing things."

It seems fairly simple, right?  Maybe.  Radishes - or at least the radish experiment - seem to offer more insight on change management, and perhaps life, than the author and playwright Samuel Beckett (you may have heard of Beckett's famous play, Waiting for Godot) suggested when he said, "What do I know of man's destiny?  I could tell you more about radishes."