Power Of 3 Satisfactions
The 3 powers are physical power, mental power, and emotional power. Satisfy physical needs, mental needs, and emotional needs together and you release their powers together. Satisfy physical needs, mental needs, and emotional needs consistently over time and you release their powers consistently over time. Releasing these 3 powers together and consistently improves behavior, performance, and success.
Power of 3 satisfactions are the basis of the strategies Paula Kramer teaches in her two workshops to reduce the tensions that can lead to workplace violence:
Gossip Power: Good, Bad, & Ugly
With You, Against You, Waiting For An Invite
Paula’s strategies open small doors that satisfy individual physical, mental, and emotional needs. Before adding these strategies to her workshops, Paula successfully used them herself. She also taught the strategies to other individuals, who later reported success. One woman did not believe a word Paula said when Paula first described specific strategies. Five years later, the woman called Paula to say, “Everything you told me to do worked.”
Power of 3 Satisfactions Can Create Spectacular Success
The Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) releases the power of 3 satisfactions with its annual renewable energy fair. The fair’s power of 3 satisfactions released together has made that fair the most successful and longest running renewable energy fair in the world. The MREA released the power of 3 satisfactions in its path to spectacular success:
Path
Giving individuals with similar passions a place and time to work together towards a common goal in ways that create both individual rewards and positive change in the world.
Satisfying physical needs
The place and time to work together
Satisfying mental needs
A common goal
Satisfying emotional needs
Creating both individual rewards and positive change in the world
Power of 3 Satisfactions Examples
Many groups and organizations and even individuals use the power of 3 satisfactions without realizing it, as the MREA has done. In her research Paula found a variety of groups and organizations creating power of 3 satisfactions. The results of this research will either be in her revised book From Pyramids To Circles: Shaping Groups To Succeed or in a blog category for that book.
Andrew Berlin, owner of the Silver Hawks in South Bend, Indiana
Earth Conservation Corps in Washington, D.C.
Café Reconcile in New Orleans, Louisiana
Choice Neighborhoods
Coffee houses acting as “third places”
Creative Matters in Los Angeles, California
Douglas Ammar in Atlanta, Georgia
Harlem Children’s Zone
High-quality pre-school programs
OWI Court in Wausau, Wisconsin
Peaceful Solutions Counseling for domestic abusers in Wausau, Wisconsin
Probation officer in Phoenix, Arizona
Pro Mujer in New York City, New York
Promise Neighborhoods
Purpose Built Communities
Rosa Parks Center in Fulton, Missouri
Shared family care programs, started in Scandinavian countries
Solutions at Work in Cambridge, Massachusetts
startingrightnow.org in Tampa, Florida
U.S. Military in Iraq
Veterans Treatment Court under Judge Robert Russell in Buffalo, New York
Ending Power of 3 Satisfactions Can Sour Spectacular Success
When individuals, groups, and organizations that use the power of 3 satisfactions don’t understand that power, they can abandon the 3 satisfactions for strategies that focus more on leader/management desires. Paula used to be involved with an organization that was a spectacular success. The organization had both customer and community support. People from around the country would come in and tell Paula and others that it was the best organization of its kind they had ever been in. Its path to spectacular success was simple, but effective.
Path
Creating a physical space for sharing work, sharing perspectives, and sharing fun.
Physical needs
Common needs
Mental needs
Mutual support
Emotional needs
Relationships and shared beliefs
When new managers took over, they stopped satisfying the 3 needs and soured the organization’s success. The organization lost community support, volunteers, customers, and income. Paula was one of the many people the organization lost.
Customers Are Grateful for Having Their 3 Needs Satisfied
Before Paula understood the power of 3 satisfactions, she did research to understand what customers wanted most. She wrote down the words customers used when they said “Thank you” for something specific.
The top five words were:
Help
Patience
Competence
Niceness
Time
Those five words satisfy physical, mental, and emotional needs:
Physical needs
Time
Mental needs
Competence
Emotional needs
Help
Patience
Niceness
Those customers were saying “Thank you” for having their physical, mental, and emotional needs satisfied.
More Examples
View this Staples Slideshare about the top 10 customer pet peeves and notice how many customers’ pet peeves fall into physical, mental, and emotional needs.
Read People Success Example #4 to understand how satisfying physical, mental, and emotional needs can improve coworker relationships, increasing productivity for the company.
Read Straightforward Success on the ‘Best Damn Ship in the Navy” at blog.smilessparksuccess.com.
Power of 3 Satisfactions Matter More Than Product & Price
For 10 years, Paula worked as a customer service agent at a catalog company. The company did its biggest sales in the month before Christmas. Orders still flowed in the week before Christmas, though many people hung up instead of placing an order. After talking with another customer service agent about how many people called the company to place an order only to hang up instead of placing an order, Paula decided investigate why customers hang up. Paula identified how the company lost about 2 million to 3 million dollars the week before Christmas every year. Customers hung up because the company hid information about extra shipping charges ($8.95 to $17.95 per address at that time) for ensuring delivery by Christmas.
The catalog company executives were not interested in my findings, so they continued to lose millions every year in the week before Christmas. For the entire 10 years I worked for that company, it failed to satisfy the physical, mental, and emotional needs of people who called to place an order.
Mental Need
The company failed to give customers the information they needed about extra shipping charges the week before Christmas.
Emotional Need
Customers hung up in distress when they realized they could not afford to place their orders.
Physical Need
Customers discovered they had wasted their time looking through the company’s catalog and would have to spend more time finding different gifts for their loved ones.
Because the catalog company failed to give power of 3 satisfactions to their customers, customers took their money elsewhere. The customers who hung up had originally found desirable products at desirable prices, but the power of 3 satisfactions trumped the desirability of the products and prices.
Eventually, the catalog company was sold to a different company. Paula wrote a letter to the new CEO. He did not acknowledge my letter, though Paula’s mail delivery is spotty so it is possible he wrote and Paula did not receive his letter. However, the next time Paula received a catalog from that company, the front cover indicated that customers should look at the order form to understand all of the shipping charges.
Power of 3 Satisfactions in Your Life
Whatever you do in your life personally and professionally, learn how to recognize and satisfy the 3 needs. The power you release with the 3 satisfactions will bring you unforeseen benefits and satisfying successes.
© Paula M. Kramer, 2010
All rights reserved.
Last updated July 9, 2017