Dan Ariely is the bestselling author of Predictably Irrational, he describes many unorthodox and often downright odd experiments in an effort to identify how emotional states, moral codes and peer pressure affect our ability to make rational decisions.
This video coveres “Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)”.
Taking these findings into account and assessing their affect on everyday life and you can find several environments that are actually geared towards cheating, intentional or not.
The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) in Australia could really take these studies into consideration.
I would love to see a study whereby drivers are reminded of their oath to abide by the road rules and not drive while fatigued. Do you think it could have a similar effect as the “honour code pledge”?
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Well – I have a cheating story that I think is okay:
A couple of years back, I worked for a soul destroying phone company doing telesales, mainly outbound. We had to make call after call to very uninterested people and I hated doing it because our training told us to say it was a “courtesy call” rather than a sales call.
So, I pretended to make calls all afternoon and when quitting time came around at 9pm, everyone would head off to the pub and I would stay for an extra hour taking all the inbound calls of people who were up late and make my quota.
I became #2 salesperson that way and never made more than a handful of cold calls.
So, what do you reckon? Unethical cheating or Tim Ferriss style 80/20 work hacking?
Sounds like the soul destroying phone company didn’t have the systems in place that would have empowered you to be even more efficient in your role. My initials thinking on a situation like this is that you were in the wrong role within a top down organisation, a position many “out of the box” thinkers find themselves.
Most telesales call centres are designed to be hubs of execution only; their existence is attributed to marketing strategy decisions make outside the centre based largely on arms length experience.
The disturbing part of all this is that this kind of employee action is not uncommon in call centres, which only leads to figures being propped up and management who approved the strategy being further lead to believe their call centre strategy is correct as is.
Just my two cents