Want better results? Feed your team well!

So you’re struggling with your team? Not getting the right results? Or they aren’t motivated? Well, maybe you need to feed them.

Now, I’m not saying everything can be solved by food (maybe it can), but data shows that people (even judges) have behavioral changes that affect their decision-making when they are hungry. So maybe all those silicon valley startups that everyone makes fun of for having fully loaded kitchens are onto something here.

In a 2011 research paper by Shai Danzigera, Jonathan Levavb, and Liora Avnaim-Pessoa, researchers found that judges were more lenient when they had food and weren’t hungry.

In its report, BAML writes:

One major advantage of robots is the elimination of human biases. Researcher Shai Danziger showed that Israeli judges’ percentage of favourable rulings jumps to ~65% after meal breaks, and declines gradually to 0 leaning into the next break. Many occupations, including medical diagnostics and fraud detection would all require impartial decision making, as well as the ability to detect trends in large data sets. The comparable advantage of an unbiased algorithmic solutions is currently tested in several fields today.

https://www.pnas.org/content/108/17/6889.full.pdf

In personal experience, I’ve found having good meals with the team and even small snacks can greatly affect the morale and bonding between the team.