What can you learn from IKEA and cake mixes when working with Governance and Compliance?

Do you know the feeling when delegating a task and then receiving the result, you think that you could have done much better yourself? Then you modify it slightly and immediately the value increases significantly?

You are not alone. Several studies indicate that it is inherent in all of us and it even has a name. This is called the IKEA effect.   

The IKEA effect is when we value something we have build ourselves far more than something we are given. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but if we get to put the final touch, we appreciate it much more.

An example of this is from the 50s, when women were beginning to work away from home. Someone in the company Betty Crocker had a great idea and launched baking mixes for cakes for all those busy housewives who had to spend their days working and had lesser time for cooking.

The housewife just had to add water, stir and put it in the oven.  Betty Crocker thought it was revolutionary and expected great success. But despite the good idea, the sale was a long time coming.
At first, they wondered in, but then they found that they had simply made it TOO easy.
Baking is about much more than stirring the dough together. It’s about the considerating act and putting an effort into making other people happy. Therefore, Betty Crocker decided to add an extra step in the process and then people had to add both water AND eggs.
Adding that little extra action boosted sales and the result is the cake mixes we see on the shelves today.

The little anecdote about Betty Crocker is supported by several behavioral studies. The most famous involves IKEA furniture, where participants are asked, assess the value of an IKEA piece of furniture. Half have built the furniture themselves and the other half just look a ready-made piece of furniture.

Again, here there is a significant difference in the added value. Those who had built the furniture themselves liked it 58% better than the control group. This study gave its name to the bias we now know as the IKEA effect.

Now you might be thinking that there can be a long way from cake mixes to NIS2?
You are probably right, but there is still something you can use. Organizations facing a large compliance task tend to hire an army of skilled consultants who help draft rules, requirements, and policies.

Page after page is produced with nice words and useful guidelines and at project handover, we are handed a paper tiger on the doorstep and then the consultants leave, when all that remains to it is to implement it….

This is where those who, like me, have worked a lot with governance and compliance nod their heads, because they know what is going to happen:       Absolutely nothing!

There is rarely anything which brings an organization to a complete standstill, like having a whole new set of rules imposed on it. Despite the good arguments, support in management and motivational town hall meetings, the project simply doesn’t move and the change doesn’t happen.
This is where, you need to remember the IKEA effect.

Because what if the consultants don’t finish it? What if your colleagues got for example a simple draft procedure and then have to fill out the last ten percent themselves, which meant that it got adapted exactly to their part of the organization?  
Could it be that they would then be significantly happier with the process? Maybe even so happy with it that they would actually start following it and take ownership of it to new employees?

Maybe it even makes sense to think continuity bias into the solution, so you let them know that they are already in progress, but just missing the last 10%? and when it comes from you personally instead of the impersonal “NIS2 compliance department”. Now the ball starts rolling…

I have tried both versions myself for the deployment of ISMSs and the difference is significant!