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The Law of Attraction: The Battle between Fuel and Friction

When a bullet is fired from a gun, it leaves the barrel moving 1,300 feet per second, breaking the sound barrier. If shot at the ideal trajectory (45 degrees), it can travel for nearly two miles. But a bullet isn't just powerful. It's equally precise. In a steady hand, a bullet will strike its target with pinpoint accuracy, time and again. What enables such a technologically simple device to achieve such extraordinary power and precision?

Most people's answer is gunpowder.

When the trigger on a gun is pulled, a firing pin strikes the bullet, causing the gunpowder inside the bullet to burn. The burning gunpowder produces gas that rapidly expands, creating enormous pressure inside the barrel of the gun. The only way for the gas to escape is to push the bullet out through the end of the barrel.

A bullet needs gunpowder to fly. But gunpowder alone doesn't enable a bullet to achieve such incredible distance, speed, and accuracy. When an object takes flight, be it a bullet, an airplane, or a pitcher's fastball, two opposing forces are at play. There are propelling forces that thrust the object forward (gunpowder, a jet engine, or a pitcher's arm). And there are constraining forces (gravity and wind resistance) that operate against forward progress.

Gunpowder isn't the wrong answer to the question, What makes a bullet fly? It's just woefully incomplete. Gunpowder explains why a bullet leaves the barrel with such tremendous force. But the reason a bullet is able to fly with pinpoint precision over a great distance is because a bullet has been optimized to reduce the principle friction operating against it - drag. Drag is the resistance an object encounters as it moves through air. To experience drag for yourself, try putting your hand out the window while driving on the highway.

Drag is the biggest obstacle to a bullet's flight. That's because the faster an object moves, the more drag it encounters. If you add more gunpowder to a bullet, it will leave the barrel with greater speed. But that increased speed also increases the drag pushing back against the bullet. That is why all bullets are rated according to their drag coefficient - the lower the drag coefficient, the better (and more expensive) the bullet.

A bullet reduces drag in two ways. First, the shape is critical. Streamlined objects with pointed ends cut through wind much better than round or blunt-shaped objects. That is why a bullet, an airplane, and a high-speed train all have the same tapered "nose." A bullet also reduces drag through spiral rotation. Guns have grooves inside the barrel that causes the bullet to rotate. Just like throwing a football, the spiraling action helps the bullet cut through the air, making it less susceptible to cross-winds that might blow it off course.

The reason a bullet flies so well is not because gunpowder gives it thrust. It's because a bullet is aerodynamic. It has been constructed to reduce the friction operating against it. A bullet, or rather people's intuition about what makes a bullet fly, is a good metaphor for the principle idea in this book. Our intuition tells us that for an idea to take flight, we need to give it thrust. And that's true. But imagine building an airplane without taking aerodynamics into account and only thinking about the power of the engines. This is precisely what we do when we launch a new idea or initiative. No wonder so few take flight.1

The Law of Attraction

How do you get people to embrace a new idea? Most marketers, innovators, executives, activists, or anyone else in the business of creating change, operate on a deep assumption. It's a view of the world so deeply ingrained in our thinking that we rarely see its influence or question its value. It is called The Law of Attraction. It is the belief that the best (and perhaps only) way to convince people to embrace a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. We instinctively believe that if we add enough value, people will say yes. This reflex leads us down a path of adding features and benefits to the idea or increasing the sizzle of the messaging - all in the hope of propelling people to get on board. We refer to strategies designed to give an idea thrust as "Fuel." Fuel is what heightens the appeal of an idea and incites our desire to change.

This book argues that people have the wrong intuitions about how to sell new ideas and create change. By focusing on Fuel to enhance attraction, innovators neglect the other half of the equation - the Friction that works against the change we seek to create. Frictions are the psychological forces that oppose change. Frictions create drag on innovation. And though they are rarely considered, overcoming these Frictions is essential for creating change.

The conventional, Fuel-based approach to innovation is necessary. Without appeal, an idea won't survive. But Fuel alone is insufficient. To create change we must first understand the forces operating against change. While we might not see them, they are there, quietly undermining our efforts to innovate. When we attempt to overcome these forces by adding more Fuel (as our instincts instruct), we inadvertently intensify the very Friction we are trying to overcome.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Customer

One day David got a call from a company in search of help. The company (we'll call it Beach House) is a fast-growing startup that is redefining how furniture is sold. The company has a unique value proposition. It allows customers to create one-of-a-kind, fully customized furniture (primarily sofas) at a price about 75 percent cheaper than other custom-furniture companies.

Beach House has considerable appeal to young, urban-dwelling millennials seeking to buy their first set of "adult" furniture. A big part of the appeal is the ability to fully customize a new sofa. This goes far beyond just selecting fabrics. Every aspect of the sofa - the style, dimensions, material, even the shape of the sofa legs - is selected by the customer. Many of its customers enjoy spending hours on the site or working with a design specialist in the store to create a sofa that is perfect for them. But something mysterious happens right before would-be customers hit the "Order" button: Nothing. They disappear before completing their purchase.

Beach House wanted to know why so many customers never purchase the furniture they spend hours creating. Logical hypotheses might include things like price, time to delivery, or a desire to shop around a bit more before committing. While these explanations are plausible, they aren't the real reason why.

It turns out, the problem had nothing to do with the company's appeal. People love Beach House's customer service, high-quality design, and low prices - all of the motivational attributes that Fuel a new purchase. Why then did so few people click "Order"? The answer is that there was a Friction that stood in the customer's way, obstructing them from the purchase they desired to make.

For Beach House customers, what stood in the way of their purchase of a new sofa - the villain of the story - was (wait for it .) the sofa currently in their home! The Friction that blocked their progress was uncertainty about what to do with their old sofa. Will the garbage truck take it? If not, who will take it? Can they carry the sofa out of the house on their own? If not, who will help them? Customers may want a new sofa, but until they figure out what to do with their current sofa, the vast majority won't make the purchase.

In interview after interview, David heard the same story. People said things like: "My partner and I were really excited about the sofa we had designed with Beach House, but we couldn't complete the purchase until my cousin agreed to take our existing sofa." Or "I loved the Beach House sofa I designed, but I had to wait for 'big trash day' in my community to complete the order. Until someone hauled away my old sofa, there was no way I could do it. I can't live with two big sofas in my small house."

If you are Beach House, what would you do with this insight? Adding features to your sofa does not solve the problem. Nor does lowering your price. You solve this problem by removing the Friction. David's recommendation was for Beach House to proactively offer to remove customers' existing furniture and donate it to families in need. As a result of this simple Friction-reducing strategy, Beach House's conversion rate rose significantly.

The Four Frictions

This book explores the four Frictions that operate against innovation and change. Like drag on a bullet, the four Frictions push back against the ideas and initiatives we want to bring into the world. When a physical object is set in motion, the value or importance of the object has nothing to do with the Friction it faces. Coating a bullet in gold increases its value but doesn't reduce its drag. Unfortunately for the innovator, the same is true of new ideas. We would like to believe that a winning idea will face less resistance than an idea of lesser value. Alas, this is not so. A great idea might have greater initial thrust, but the value of an idea does nothing to abate the...