Pushing Buttons In New York!
One of my abiding memories of New York city is of crossing the streets there. I was quite fascinated with what I saw when I first visited New York. There was of course the orderly discipline at the zebra crossing – with both pedestrians and motorists respecting each other’s right of way. If you were crossing the road and the signal was red, you waited. It didn’t matter whether there was a car or not. Everyone waited. You can imagine what a culture shock it must have been for someone who grew up perfecting the opportunistic art of crossing the streets in Mumbai.
But that wasn’t all. I was intrigued to see a panel with a push button, mounted on a pole at the crossing. I wasn’t sure how it worked. I then noticed wiser and more experienced locals pressing the button – to hasten the green light that would allow us to cross. The pedestrian– is indeed king here, I thought to myself. Press button. Let them know you are waiting. Watch them stop the cars. Cross.
I quickly adapted. At every crossing, I’d press the button. The next pedestrian who came along would often do that too. And sometimes, when it didn’t seem to stop the flow of cars, someone would press the button again, and again, until finally the cars stopped and the light turned green. Why can’t we have these in India too, I wondered.
And then some years later, I learned something. I read that many decades ago, in a bid to streamline the flow of traffic in New York, the city administration had computerised the traffic signal network. Traffic signals were optimised, and the push buttons at the pedestrian crossings were no longer required. But there was a problem. The authorities figured it would cost them a lot of money to remove those push buttons from all the crossings. So, they decided to just leave them there. Deactivated. But still very much there.
Turns out then that pedestrians were continuing to press those buttons – thinking they worked – when they didn’t. The Placebo effect was at work. We were feeling good doing something that didn’t make a difference – but just made us feel good.
I think New York’s push buttons are all around us – at work, inside board rooms. And inside our homes too. We continue to do things believing they work, even when they don’t. But we like it. It keeps us busy. And we like the feeling of being in control. Some New Yorkers will tell you that while they had a sense it didn’t work, they’d press those buttons when they were in a hurry. Just in case it worked. Or hoping it might work, just this one time. Happens in our lives too. Desperation can drive us to do things we know don’t work. It makes us want to get busy ‘doing something’. We want to feel we are in control.
I was thinking about the several New York push buttons in our life as I made my way back home last evening. Got out of the car. Got into the elevator. Pressed the button to take me to the 19th floor. And then pressed the “close door” button, as I always do, to get the elevator doors to shut quickly and take me home.
And I wondered. Does that “close door” button in an elevator really work?
Prakash Iyer is a speaker and leadership coach and former MD of Kimberly Clark Lever
