Mobilize
Mobilize is the name of the new Renault business unit that brings fully electric car sharing to the city of Bergamo. There will be 4 main cities in which 45 Zoe E-Tech Electric cars will arrive from June (35 in Bergamo and 10 in the surrounding areas). A big step forward for Bergamo which therefore aims at a paradigm shift aimed at the new electric and sustainable mobility.In detail, the service will be active 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with the Station Based Round formula Trip. At the end of the journey, each user must therefore return the car to the same parking station where the service was activated. As explained by the communication director of Renault Italy, Francesco Fontana Giusti, the advantage consists precisely in always finding a parking space at the end of the race. However, the same company does not rule out the possibility of adopting a free floating service in the future to allow users to leave their car anywhere.
Bergamo, a symbol of the restart and rebirth, means filling a reputation with positive contents our city has acquired, in spite of itself, in the last year due to the painful events linked to the pandemic. We want to leave the Covid19 story behind, giving impetus and releasing the many energies that have always distinguished this territory and our city. The new Mobilize car-sharing represents a piece of this complex and rich puzzle of opportunities that Bergamo must seize in order to restart with conviction, commented the Mayor of Bergamo Giorgio Gori.
The service will cost 10 euros per hour and includes a distance of 50 kilometers. Starting from the 51st you will pay 20 cents per kilometer, with the possibility of renting a car from a minimum of half an hour to a maximum of seven days. For users who want to plan longer commissions, the daily rate is available at a cost of 50 euros.
Once the service is active, a dedicated app will also be available from which to check the availability of the cars and the relative charging level. In any case, the 45 Zoes will be continuously monitored so that users always find them charged. In the municipalities that have joined the initiative, there will also be advantages for those who will use car sharing, such as free parking, the possibility of driving along the preferential lanes and free access to the Ztl.
An intelligent and sustainable system that therefore aims to a further development: soon another 8 Renault dealerships will launch the electric car sharing service in different territories.
The Pulsar Plus wallbox with charging power up to 7.4 kW is available on Amazon.
To Supercharge DE&I, Mobilize The Middle
Organizations can supercharge their DE&I efforts by mobilizing the middle.
UnsplashAt this moment, organizations everywhere are in the process of considering how to focus their investments of time, energy, and money to meet the challenge of addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, our ongoing research suggests there is one critical decision to make that can have a huge impact on the success of your initiatives. This decision can be difficult to discern, and many companies will get it wrong. The question is when you are trying to mobilize your leaders to get behind your DE&I strategy, who are you going to focus on?
The stakes are high. Poorly-designed and -executed efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion have had the exact opposite of the intended impact. People can feel forced, accused, or excluded, any of which can reinforce biases or even lead to a backlash. Brains have an innate tendency to sort others into us and them. Highlighting differences can play right into that tendency.
On any kind of change issue, the majority of leaders land in the middle of a bell curve. Those who actively resist a change are at one end of the curve, with passionate advocates at the other end. The leaders in the middle of the bell curve are not against a DE&I program, but could go either way.
So where will you focus? Will you try to finally win over the leaders who’ve been vocally against the growing emphasis on DE&I? Or will you focus more on the leaders who seem to be already on board, to get them even more motivated?
While either of these strategies might seem to make sense, our ongoing research suggests something else: Focus on the middle of that bell curve, the largest group.
Don’t speak to the advocates
Many people who work directly within the DE&I space in an organization could be tempted to build a DE&I initiative based on the belief that everyone has the same passion that you have. But your sense of “everyone” may be warped by the false consensus effect. Everyone around you is passionate about this DE&I initiative, but that’s not true of everyone you need to reach. If your messaging assumes people are on board, you leave behind the large number of people who are on the fence, and annoy people who are not at all on board.
Focusing on passionate advocates with an ineffective effort can have ironic consequences. Sometimes individuals with a reputation for being unprejudiced don't feel they need to engage with the programming and feel freer to discriminate. Just the fact that the organization is providing DE&I programming may be taken as proof that it isn’t biased, making bias more difficult to address.
Don’t focus on the naysayers
Or, you may be eager to build a DE&I initiative focused on those leaders most resistant to change. They may be the most in need of DE&I training, and the most adamant in their opposition to your efforts. Your human bias toward safety—the drive to avoid the negative is much stronger than the drive to embrace the positive—may lead you to tailor a DE&I program to inform and convince them. Having them on board could make the most difference in the organization. Win them over with the facts, and the rest of the leaders will be easier to corral, right?
Maybe not. They may just dig in their heels and become more resistant to change. Research supported by the National Science Foundation looked into three studies of the effects of pro-diversity statements in the application process. Two studies found that some in higher-status groups were concerned that they would be treated unfairly. A third study found that those who applied to the company with a pro-diversity statement, exhibited greater cardiovascular threat, expressed more concerns about being discriminated against, and made a poorer impression during the interview compared with those who applied to a company with no diversity statement.
Designing a program in a way that assumes people are not on board can lead to some in your organization feeling attacked, while others feel smug, alienated, or disheartened.
What’s more, when an organization’s public statements contradict employees’ experiences, employees won’t trust their DE&I programming. Many will recognize that the training is a performance, and some may feel further marginalized.
Mobilize the middle
A better approach is to focus on mobilizing the middle—the leaders who are not against the idea of improving the organization’s DE&I, but lack the commitment, tools, and strategies to actually implement change. Your goal should be to expand that group. Equip these leaders to learn and model the behaviors you want, showing that this is the way we do things here, and let the human need for relatedness help scale your DE&I initiative.
Science says that normative influences, not just awareness, actually motivate people to change their behavior. If people believe that everyone else is on board with DE&I, they are more likely to get on board themselves, sometimes unconsciously.
In one study on the effects of social norms, researchers studied whether in-room signage influenced hotel guests to reuse their towels. Some rooms had signs stating that 75% of guests who stayed in that particular room used their towels more than once. Guests in rooms with that sign had more guests reuse their towels than those in rooms with signs with different identity descriptors, or with a less-specific help-save-the-environment message.
Signage that stated that the majority of guests who stayed in that room reused towels was a better predictor of behavior than self-identification as environmentally conscious.
Researchers saw those actions by just stating what the normal behavior is in that room. A guest wouldn’t think anybody would know whether they abided by the norm. How strong might the normative effect be with the panopticon effect—the feeling someone just might be watching?
Changing guest towel behavior is different from changing an organization’s culture, but in both cases, humans behave in service to the need to belong. That need compels us to comply with norms, even for a not-consciously-considered group like guests of room 620. Beyond feeling that we belong, humans like to demonstrate that we belong, driving us to behave such that there’s no doubt where we stand just in case someone happens to see us.
In summary, if you want to make real change in DE&I in your organization, or in the wider world, know that attitudes toward any change exist on a bell curve. Be careful of strategies that focus on people already on board, or strategies that try to persuade people firmly against the idea. Instead, the right way to focus may be on the middle of the bell curve. As the middle comes along, that larger group gives you a larger positive impact, with minimal negative impact on the groups at the ends of the bell curve. Let the middle form normative effects to influence the naysayers. To make this moment matter, let’s all focus more on moving the middle.