How can behavioral science help us evolve our company culture?
There are many ways of course, but one way can be by better linking artifacts and values to the underlying assumptions within the organization.
In the example we can see two side of this
A) One the one side we have a manager who is asking an employee to fill in timesheets - this is the artifact.
B) On the other side this artifact forms a belief from the employee that there is a lack of trust and hence a lack of autonomy at work (which will decrease motivation)
If we apply behavioral science methods, we can get a more robust way to understand the organization and to map out these kinds of artifacts and then with these in mind we can use behavioral models to quickly identify if the artifacts align with the values and culture we have and see what the gaps are to reach the culture we strive for.
This evidence based way of working is key to getting better outcomes and to be more realistic about change.
You cannot tell a team that you value trust and yet your artifacts say otherwise - if that is the case then the change will never come.
You need to ensure that you have the right levers to move in the organization in order for things to improve, and that should be something you know about from the start of your change project - if you can't pull certain levers, then no matter what you communicate about this exciting new change, you will just be reinforcing the assumptions people have.
What are you doing at work to link artifacts to values?