Introducing behavioral science into an organization requires a willingness to embrace new thinking tools.
Having worked in business transformation, business design and Innovation prior to embracing behavioral science helped me open my mind and expand my tools.
Remember, we all work on behavior and behavior change, whether we know it or not - some of us use an approach to doing it and some of us don't.
To be purposeful about behavior change, we need to understand people (and the system) and the things that can drive them forward.
The United Nations wrote in their behavioral science report a while back, that to drive the adoption of behavioral science, leaders must understand its value proposition and be vocal advocates for its application.
I must admit that we as behavioral scientists must work harder ourselves to make sure the value proposition and its outcomes are well aligned to help organizations achieve better results.
Behavioral Science (combined with other disciplines) can help organizations work on:
-Organizational Culture (Wellbeing, Psychological Safety, Incentives etc...) -Transformation and Reinvention -Communications and Marketing -Innovation -Digital Products -Services and Experiences -And many more areas....
An understanding of behavioral science can also have a real positive impact on people's lives:
The UN is working on things like:
-Gender Equality -Poverty -Sustainable Cities and Communities -Affordable Clean Energy
The benefits of behavioral science together with other disciplines is great, as I mention, but we have to move away from it being sold as a simple bag of tricks.
Every project we go into at Aim For Behavior has it's own context, needs its own models or theories and requires us to make sure we understand what insights and strategies are actually achievable for the organization to put into practice.
The value for organizations is not to learn a list of biases or nudges, it is to acquire new thinking tools, so that they can use these when they need to recruit someone new, create a policy or a new process, know how to communicate and market a product or innovate to outcompete others.
We as behavioral scientists need to help equip organizations with these thinking tools, and not build black boxes.
Anyone can learn behavioral science, and you don't need to be an academic to do it - I wasn't.
Some tips to get your curiosity going:
1. Read journals and books on it
2. Read about theories and models
3. Take a course or training
4.
Follow people like
Amy Bucher Laura de Molière Elina Halonen, Steven Johnson FRSA, Kristen Berman, Stephen Wendel, Nick Hobson, PhD, Michael Hallsworth Steve Martin Dilip Soman and others....
Once you feel ready, you can conduct an analysis of your organization's capabilities and possible use cases to help bring behavioral science in to complement or enhance you ways of working.